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ASEAN upbeat RCEP will conclude this year
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ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi. (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)
I
t is now or never for countries involved in the ambitious Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to resolve their differences and conclude the seven years of negotiations, as the trade war between the United States and China continues to pose challenges in the region.
ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi said the prolonged trade tensions had created more urgency for ASEAN to push forward with the RCEP negotiations intensively. He expressed optimism that the RCEP could be concluded in the coming months.
ASEAN members and its six partner countries have gone through many rounds of negotiations since ASEAN leaders mandated the conclusion of RCEP by the end of this year, with the latest meeting being held in Melbourne earlier this month.
“Looking at the last meeting, there are so many developments there. [...] Because as you know that all the elections have concluded, including in Indonesia, India and Thailand, so the political difficulty has been resolved,” he told journalists at the third ASEAN Media Forum in Bangkok on Monday.
Currently in the 27th negotiation round, the trade negotiators are in Zhengzhou, China, from July 22 to break deadlocks, including over market access. The talks will be followed by a RCEP trade ministers meeting in Beijing on Aug. 2-3.
More meetings are scheduled ahead of the November deadline, Lim said, including the economic ministers meeting in September and a number of senior officials meetings before November.
Lim compared the RCEP talks to the negotiations of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which took seven years to finish.
