The ASEAN Trade Facilitation Joint Consultative Committee convenes the 16th meeting in Hanoi on January 10

The meeting on January 10 was the first oneconomic issues organised by the MoIT in Vietnam’s 2020 ASEAN Chairmanship Luong Hoang Thai, Director of the MoIT’s Multilateral Trade Policy Department, said the event discussed the cooperationin facilitating intra-ASEAN trade

and consulted about initiatives such assimplifying customs procedures with the aim of reducing 10 percent of tradingcost within the bloc in 2020.

Participants looked into ways to double theintra-bloc trade value in the 2017-2025 period as targeted in the 2025 TradeFacilitation Strategic Action Plan of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) andthe AEC 2025 Strategic Action Plan for Trade in Goods.

Issues put on the table also included theestablishment of a mechanism for exchanging information about non-tariffmeasures (NTMs), the increase of consultation between ASEAN governments and thebusiness community, and a proposal for regulatory impact assessment of NTMs.

The meeting updated the database on NTMs builtby ASEAN’s partners to publish on the ASEAN Trade Repository and the nationaltrade repositories of the member countries. It also proposed the organisationof workshops and capacity building for the nations.

Thai noted that as the chairman, Vietnamactively conferred with other ASEAN members, the ASEAN Secretariat, the bloc’sspecialised agencies and partners to help the meeting reach unanimity on the issuesraised at the meeting./.VNA