Draft law presented on ratifying Mongolia-Japan EPA

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Head of the Cabinet Secretariat S.Bayartsogt submitted to the Speaker the draft law on ratification of the Economic Partnership Agreement between Mongolia and Japan on February 12. The initiator of the draft said that the inking of the EPA was agreed in a scope of the Strategic Partnership agreement of Mongolia and Japan signed in 2010. In frames of the preparation for the EPA negotiations, a joint research team was set up that year and it determined the relative advantages of the two countries and set a scope and spheres to be negotiated within the EPA. Based on the joint research results, a working group and a team of experts for the negotiations were brought together in accordance with a PM's direction issued in 2012, he said. The working group and the experts, consisting of over hundred officials from related state Ministries and agencies, conducted seven-stage negotiations with the Japanese side in 2012-2015. The EPA addressed 17 specific issues including products’ trade, origin regulations, customs procedures, sanitary conditions, technical barriers in trades, service trade, improvement of investment business environment, intellectual properties’ and online trade, policy on competitiveness, settlement of disputes, general and final matters, collaboration, migration, and Government procurement. The Economic Partnership Agreement has 17 chapters and 10 appendixes and an agreement on implementation. The Agreement on Implementation will be adopted by the Cabinet after the ratification by parliament.