Vietnam to Remove All ASEAN Tariff Barriers by 2012

Vietnam will lift all ASEAN tariff barriers by 2012 upon following the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme for the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), finance minister Vu Van Ninh has said, while adding that the country has cut tariffs on over 53 per cent of goods groups.

 

The agenda was announced during a meeting last week in Kuala Lumpur where ASEAN member countries reviewed their AFTA accomplishments, and addressed plans for follow-up tasks.

 

At the gathering, regional countries also approved a plan to lift non-tariff barriers to further promote intra-ASEAN trade exchange. Participants also agreed on the statutes on origins for steel and iron and asked experts to continue study to unify the open origin regulations for ASEAN.

 

For the General Exclusion List (GEL), ministers approved the itinerary for tariff reduction and removal for such goods which are moved from GEL to CEPT and asked experts to deal with the remaining issues related to GEL.

 

So far, six member countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have basically complete tariff reduction under CEPT/AFTA thereby more than 60 per cent of goods items are entitled to tariff rate of zero percent.