Draft Amendments To 18 Laws For TPPA Completed, Says MITI

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 6 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's International Trade and Industry Ministry has done the draft amendments to 18 laws in its effort to implement the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Secretary-General Datuk J. Jayasiri said the amendment process would be done in stages as some laws were easier and some were more complex. "The process has already started whereby the draft for all the 18 laws that need to be amended have already been done and consultations are ongoing. "Considering the 2017 Budget is around the corner, it is difficult to send in bills (to Parliament) for consideration but we hope to do all this by the first half of next year," he told a press conference after the half-day "Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): Across Borders" seminar here, Thursday. When asked what would happen if the laws were ratified in Malaysia but failed to go through the US congress, he said: "We have not yet decided on what would be done but we can defer the implementation of the laws until such time that the agreement has entered into force". Touching briefly on another mega trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said there would be two more rounds of discussions and all the countries involved were trying hard to come up with deliverables by year-end. However, he said there were some challenges as it was hard for all 16 countries to reach one common ground. The seminar, jointly organised by SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp), logistics company UPS and the US-ASEAN Business Council, is aimed at equipping the SMEs with knowledge on free trade agreements that Malaysia entered into to facilitate participation of local companies in regional and global value chains. Also present at the event were SME Corp Chief Executive Officer Datuk Hafsah Hashim, UPS Asia-Pacific Public Affairs Vice-President Shiumei Lin and US-ASEAN Business Council Chief Representative Ezani Mansor. SME is a central coordinating agency under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry that formulates overall policies and strategies for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and coordinates the implementation of SME development programmes. -- BERNAMA