Mar. 24 – Vietnam concluded its participation as an associate member in the first round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations held last week in Melbourne, Australia.
Vietnamese authorities joined the talks with their counterparts from the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, and Singapore. Vietnam was present at the TPP talks as an associate member with the option to remain in the group after joining three sets of talks. The TPP aims to reduce all trade tariffs to zero by 2015 for all member countries as well as boost trade and support jobs and improve regional integration, regulatory coherence and development.
The TPP serves as a regional trade group that would have broad-based membership. It will tackle free trade agreement aspects that include trade in goods, rules of origin, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, trade in services, intellectual property, government procurement and competition policy.
The group has four full members: Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, with the United States entering negotiations to join the TPP in 2008. More countries are slated to be full members soon. Vietnamese spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga was quoted by the Vietnam Nation prior to the talks as saying that the country’s participation shows its determination to continue its renewal process in general and in-depth international economic integration in particular. The TPP talks will be conducted in four rounds per year.
