Six of the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would bring their tariff to zero for all merchandises on Jan. 1 2010, a statement from the ASEAN Secretariat said on Monday.
The six countries were Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, which have been following the
liberalization efforts since the introduction of ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 1992.
"This is definitely an occasion for ASEAN to celebrate," said Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of the ASEAN.
He also said that it was a demonstration of how ASEAN was moving on track towards tariff liberalization despite the global struggle against a rising tide of protectionism.
On the trade facilitation front, ASEAN was also exerting maximum efforts in developing an ASEAN Trade Repository, which would be a dynamic
inventory and a single reference point, providing the most up-to-date information on all tariff and non- tariff measures applied on goods entering, exiting and transiting a country.
To monitor the implementation of the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, the ASEAN Trade Facilitation Joint Consultative Committee (ATF-JCC), comprised officials in the areas of trade, customs, standards and conformance, transport and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, had been endorsed. The ASEAN's total GDP was 1,504 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, a level almost double that of the 2003. ASEAN trade was on a similar upward trend of 1,710 billion U.S. dollars in 2008 compared to 824 billion U.S. dollars in 2003. Foreign direct investment into the region grew from 24 billion U.S. dollars in 2003 to 60 billion U.S. dollars in 2008.