ASEAN TO SIGN AGREEMENT ON COMMITMENT FOR CEPT-AFTA

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 (Bernama) -- A new agreement to further strengthen the

Common Effective Preferential Tariff-Asean Free Trade Area Agreement 1992 or
CEPT-AFTA, has been drawn up and is expected to be signed at the 14th Asean
Summit in Thailand.

The Asean Summit which was scheduled to be held in the middle of this month
has been postponed to next March following the poiltical crisis in
Thailand.

The Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry Jacob Dungau
Sagan said all agreements and protocol related to the liberalisation of trade in
goods would be included in one new comprehensive agreement for easy reference in
an effort to implement commitment.

"The agreement will inculcate discipline among Asean countries so that
achieving the AFTA objectives in 2015 will be easy," he told the Upper House of
Parliament Wednesday.

Jacob said this while replying to a question from Senator Norhayati Onn,
who had asked if the government would consider speeding up intra Asean free
trade.

Under the CEPT-AFTA 1992 agreement, Asean countries had agreed to the
abolishment of import duties on goods from Jan 1, 2010 for the six original
members of Asean and from Jan 1, 2015 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and
Vietnam.

This year, Asean as a whole had abolished import duties for 63.45 percent
of
all products for intra Asean trade, in line with the commitment under the
CEPT-AFTA.

For the six original members of Asean -- Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore,
Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines -- the abolishment of import duties has
reached 84.94 percent.

Malaysia specifically has abolished the import duties for 82.65 percent of
products.The complete abolishment of import duties will be done in 2010.

However, an exemption on import duties will be made for products deemed
sensitive such as rice, tropical fruits, tobacco, sugar, liquor and
firearms.

-- BERNAMA