EU supports trade negotiation skills
EU supports trade negotiation skills
A team of economists from the European Union have been advising Lao officials, academics and business people about regional and international trade policy, aiming to strengthen their negotiating capacity in relation to future trade agreements.
A four day workshop on the matter commenced yesterday, with twenty-five Lao officials, academics and business representatives taking part in the ‘Preparing for Preferential and Multilateral Trade Negotiations: Trade in Goods and Services'seminar.
Opening the workshop was Director of the ASEAN Economic Cooperation Division, Mr Kiengkhammanh Khottavong alongside Head of Development Cooperation for the EU delegation in Laos Mr Stefan Schleuning and Dr Carolyn Gates, the team leader of the EU-ASEAN Enhancing ASEAN FTA Negotiating Capacity Programme.
The four-day workshop will present strategies of how to negotiate agreements on trade in goods and services. During the last two days, participants will do a simulation of such a negotiation that presents realistic issues that the Lao PDR may face in future trade negotiations.
The workshop seeks to raise the knowledge and awareness of Lao officials, business representatives and academics about international and regional trade policy, with a particular focus on the negotiation of goods and services aspects of free trade agreements (which usually also deal with other matters).
Workshop participants include officials from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning and Investment and representatives of the National University of Laos, National Economic Research Institute, Economic Research for Trade and the Lao National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
This initiative is the third in a series of “in-country C-L-M-V narrowing the development / trade gap” workshops held in the capitals of the four most recent members of ASEAN - Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam or C-L-M-V—in an effort to narrow the development/trade gap between them, on the one hand, and the older – and richer - ASEAN members (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The first in-country workshop was held in Cambodia in November 2012; and the second in Hanoi in May 2013. A fourth in-country workshop is scheduled for Myanmar in September 2013.
The “Enhancing ASEAN FTA Negotiating Capacity Programme” is a 2.5 million euro technical cooperation programme funded by the EU for the benefit of ASEAN member states. It supports ASEAN economic integration and facilitates ASEAN's preparedness for participating in FTA negotiations. It covers a broad range of trade and investment issues and addresses traditional and non-traditional issues and newer 21st century challenges.
To raise awareness and consult with ASEAN stakeholders, the FTA programme conducts Public Dialogue Forums on trade-related issues of interest, which are currently being organised in a majority of ASEAN Member States.
ASEAN is the EU's third largest trading partner outside Europe (after the US and China). Total trade in goods and services between the two sides reached 180 billion euro in 2012. The EU is ASEAN's second largest trading partner after China, accounting for around 11 percent of total ASEAN's trade with the rest of the world.
The EU is by far the largest foreign investor in ASEAN, holding around a quarter of all investment stock in ASEAN. EU companies invested around 16 billion euros in ASEAN in 2011 alone.
The EU and ASEAN started regional negotiations in 2007, which were also designed to contribute to ASEAN's process of regional integration.
Although these negotiations are currently sus pended and the process is following a bilateral track, the EU still believes that a region-to-region free trade agreement between both regions makes political and economic sense in the long term and the strategic objective of concluding an agreement with the ASEAN as a region is retained.
vientiane times
