Fifteen countries in Asia and the Pacific signed a major trade deal on Sunday, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which aims to create a massive free trade zone between the ten ASEAN states. According to analysts, this is the largest trade deal in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP).
The trade agreement was signed at the end of the virtual summit of ASEAN, the Asian country federation. The ten ASEAN states (Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei) and China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have signed the free trade agreement.
“I am pleased that after eight years of complex negotiations, we can officially end the RCEP negotiations today,” said Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuân Phúc, whose country holds the rotating ASEAN Presidency. This agreement, the idea of which dates back to 2012, is seen as the Chinese answer to an American initiative that has since been abandoned.
The RCEP, whose members represent 30 percent of global GDP, will be “an important step in the liberalization of trade and investment” in the region, said Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for Asia and the Pacific at IHS Markit.
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