Shanghai city in East China recently issued measures to speed up the city's roll-out of RCEP, or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – the giant trade bloc involving China and a raft of powerful Asian and Pacific-rim economics that is coming into force this year.
With RCEP now progressively taking effect, the tariffs on goods traded in the bloc will be reduced, with more than 90 percent of the goods eventually having zero tariffs.
The measures put forward are that Shanghai will ramp up its imports trade with RCEP member countries, expand diversified international markets and promote the regional integration of cross-border e-commerce markets.
It will accelerate the development of offshore trade and entrepot trades and improve customs clearances, to boost the high-quality development of trade in goods.
Under the measures, Shanghai is expected to strengthen its ties with investment promotions agencies for Japan, Singapore, South Korea and other countries in the city to attract more foreign investment.
Shanghai enterprises are also seen grabbing opportunities generated by the RCEP accord to increase their investments in agricultural resources, biological medicines, telecommunications, green energy, infrastructure and other fields in key member countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.
The measures also encourage national strategic platforms – such as the China International Import Expo, the Hongqiao International Open Hub and the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone – to take the lead in forging ahead and setting examples for amplifying the anticipated RCEP spillover effects.
In
the first month of 2022, Shanghai Customs accepted 273 import
preferential declaration forms with a value of 280 million yuan ($44.18
million) and tariff concessions worth 4.9 million yuan – issuing 4,553
RCEP certificates of origin, worth 1.79 billion yuan.
