Officials from New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei signed a trade agreement yesterday, pledging to wipe out all tariffs they impose on one another's exports by 2015.
They said other nations would be welcome to join the new mini free-trade bloc, which will remove 90 percent of tariffs by Jan. 1 next year.
"We expect like-minded countries to join this agreement," Singapore High Commissioner to New Zealand Seetoh Hoy Cheng said after the formal signing of the first multi-party free trade agreement spanning the Pacific and Asia.
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
New Zealand Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton told journalists the pact had political and strategic importance beyond trade.
Sutton said that he had "already had a range of nibbles from other nations in South America and Asia" interested in signing up to the trade deal.
"We are likely to expand this agreement to include other nations," he said, adding that "it is one of the very few agreements that span the Pacific."
Chile's ambassador Juan Salazar said: "We believe this is a starting point for the region and probably for the world."
Trade between the four nations, all members of APEC, totals more than NZ$2.5 billion (US$1.7 billion).
Although more than 90 percent of trade will become duty free immediately, all tariffs on some goods shipped between New Zealand deemed sensitive because of local production will not be abolished until 2017.
Singapore and New Zealand already have a bilateral free trade deal that eliminated all tariffs between them.
GOOD POTENTIAL
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark told the signatories that ``there is potential for trade flows ... to expand significantly'' in the wake of the agreement.
The deal provides for the elimination of all trade tariffs between the four partners, ``a feat not often achieved in trade agreements,'' she noted.
The four states, which have a combined GDP of some NZ$400 billion, also signed a Labor Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding and an Environment Cooperation Agreement.
These agreements reinforced the states' objective of having good labor standards and improving environmental protection, Clark said.
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