Singapore and Vietnam, together with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, and Peru recently have signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in Santiago, Chile.
CPTPP is the obliged further step of the original Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) signed in 2016, after US, originally members, withdrew from it. The remaining 11 countries resumed talks to keep the deal alive, ending up with the signature of the CPTPP on March 2018.
CPTPP sets a new standard of the global trade which covers trade and traded related issues beginning with trade in goods and continuing through customs and trade facilitation, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, trade remedies, investment, services, electronic commerce, government procurement, intellectual property, labour and environment.
This agreement is a great opportunity for both Singapore and Vietnam because will strengthen trade among countries in the Asia-Pacific, through the substantial elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers for goods, improving access for service suppliers in a wide range of sectors, greater facilitation of investments, enhancing access to government procurement contracts.
As a key regional agreement, the CPTPP will complement Singapore’s existing network of bilateral free trade agreements. It will expand Singapore’s economic space, boost trade and investment flows, make it easier for our companies to do business in the region, and unlock economic development opportunities. Plus, new market access into countries, like Canada and Mexico, where Singapore does not have free trade agreements (FTAs) with. CPTPP member countries accounted for 22.2 per cent of Singapore’s total good trade, in 2017
CPTPP unites a diverse group of countries, diverse by geography, language and history, size, and levels of development. All CPTPP countries recognize that diversity is a unique asset, but also one which requires close cooperation and capacity-building for the lesser-developed.
As negotiations were successfully concluded in early 2018, ratification is expected by 2019.