|
Thursday, May 08, 2003
US, Singapore sign landmark free trade agreement
WASHINGTON, DC—The United States and Singapore on Tuesday signed a landmark free trade pact, the first such deal between Washington and an Asian nation, launching a new era in pan-Pacific commerce.
“Singapore is a nation that is small in size, but large in influence,” said President George W. Bush, before signing the deal with Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
Goh returned the favor, praising Bush’s “vision and leadership,” billing the deal, which must be endorsed by the US Congress, as an “ambitious and comprehensive agreement.”
The United States sees the pact as a stepping stone to a potential 500 million consumers
in Southeast Asia, as Singapore is a vital hub for trade throughout the region.
Trade experts also see the deal as a blueprint for other such pacts with partners in Asia and elsewhere, though there are fears such a strategy could detract from efforts to secure a new global free trade regime.
For Singapore, the deal cements its strategy of anchoring the United States within the Asian security and trading framework.
“America’s presence has helped to shape contemporary Southeast Asia,” Goh said. “Without the US (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) would not have prospered as quickly as we did.”
The pact will further open market access for US service providers in Singa-pore’s financial services industry, although Singapore retains the right to impose capital controls under extreme conditions.
The deal promotes new interaction between each side’s pharmaceutical, digital and textile industries, and harmonises customs procedures and intellectual property standards.
Singapore is the 11th largest trading partner of the United States with bilateral trade totalling around US$34 billion annually.
The FTA has a provision allowing information technology products produced in other Southeast Asian industrial zones to be deemed made in Singapore in order to enter the US market tariff-free, and with less bureaucracy.
An industrial estate in largely Muslim Indonesia’s island of Bintan near Singapore will be the first beneficiary of this initiative.
But it is that unrestrained free trade which worries some critics of Singapore. (AFP)
The Environmental Investigation Agency (CIA) pressure group called on Bush to urge Singapore to tighten customs procedures and enforcement in its vast port.
The group claimed Singapore had been used as a transit point to export millions of dollars of illegally cut ramin—a protected species of tree—to the United States without permits required by the Convention in International Endangered Species. (AFP)
(May 8, 2003 issue)
Want Sun.Star news on your mobile phone? Click here.
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
|
[ return
to top ]
[ home
]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
