China, ASEAN become 4th largest trade partners

BEIJING—China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) became each other’s fourth-largest trading partners last year, the China-ASEAN Business Council said here on Friday.
Total bilateral trade surged 25.9 percent year-on-year to 202.5billion U.S. dollars, reaching that level three years ahead of the mutual target. Arin Jira, the secretary-general of ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said that they expected further increases and hoped China would lift duties on some export goods, such as semi-processed steel products.
The current export duties for such goods, including slabs, ranged from 5 percent to 25 percent. Arin said he hoped they could be lifted before 2015. Yang Zunqing, secretary-general of the China Iron & Steel Association, said that soaring ore prices and government efforts to reduce steel exports resulted in the declining export volume. He said that China could provide equipment and technology to help ASEAN countries process their own raw materials, such as gas and ore, which were abundant in these countries.
Arin also called for uniform export quality standards. “I wish we could sit down and talk about specific details soon,” he said. ASEAN, which wants to establish a single market and production base, has 10 members, including Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. The ninth meeting of the China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Joint Cooperation Committee is to be held from March 3 to 5 in China’s southwestern Chongqing municipality, China’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday.
Senior officials from the foreign ministries of China and ten ASEAN member states are expected to attend the meeting. The three-day meeting will focus on the exchange of views on facilitating substantial and all-round cooperation between China and ASEAN, and implement follow-up actions of the China-ASEAN summit last year, according to the Foreign Ministry.

—Xinhua