Singapore and Australia signed a free trade pact yesterday, slashing tariffs and opening up service markets, with both sides hoping the deal would smooth trade to the US.
The pact, signed by Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry George Yeo and Australia's Trade Minister Mark Vaile, is Canberra's first in 20 years.
The agreement lifts all tariffs on Australia-bound Singapore goods and on Australian imports to Singapore, notably beer and stout.
The two men signed the agreement and exchanged documents in a packed ballroom of a Singapore hotel amid handshakes and applause.
Vaile said the agreement with Singapore doesn't offer Australia much "in terms of market access," because bilateral tariffs between the two countries were already low.
However, the Australian services sector would be a big beneficiary of the agreement, he said.
The new deal is expected to be a springboard for Australia's legal, financial, telecoms, education and environmental services in the city-state.
Singapore investors, too, will have improved access to Australia's telecommunications sector. Australia is pledging to ease the dominance of its national telecommunications company Telstra in the local market.
"The Australian government has undertaken strong pro-competitive disciplines to manage the dominance of [Telstra], which owns and operates a large part of Australia's network services," IE Singapore, the city-state's trade board, said.
That could be good news for Singapore government-linked SingTel, which purchased Telstra rival Optus in 2001 after a much-publicized battle over foreign ownership and whether Singapore might try to use it for intelligence gathering.
The agreement does not require Singapore's government-linked companies to ease its restrictions on foreign ownership.
But Australian companies wanting to bid for government business in Singapore would be given "nondiscriminatory national treatment," the Australian government said.
The agreement also makes it easier for Australian law firms to set up here.
The ministers said they hoped the deal would also smooth the flow of trade between Singapore, Australia and the US.
Both countries are in the process of negotiating their own free-trade pacts with officials in the superpower's capital in Washington.
"The conclusion of this agreement is a very important triangle in building an economic relationship with the largest and most dynamic economy in the world," Vaile said.
The free trade agreement is expected to come into force by the middle of this year and will be periodically reviewed after that, Yeo said.
"This is a living, breathing, dynamic document and it will be reviewed after the first year of implementation and every two years after," said Yeo.
Last year, two-way trade between Singapore and Australia amounted to S$9.9 billion (US$5.7 billion).
Singapore already has free trade deals with the nations of Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. The city-state expects to sign a similar deal with the US sometime this year. Australia is negotiating its own free trade agreement with Thailand.
The official name of the agreement is the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement, or SAFTA, and it was hammered out after more than two years of intense negotiations.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last