Stakeholder debrief report – 9th ACAFTA Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) meeting
August 21 – 23, 2024 (Virtual)
General overview
The 9th Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) meeting for the ASEAN-Canada Free Trade Agreement (ACAFTA) negotiations took place virtually from August 21 – 23, 2024, through two three-hour sessions.
The 9th TNC Meeting was co-led by Canada’s new Chief Negotiator (CN) and TNC Co-Chair, Mary-Catherine Speirs, Director General, Trade Negotiations Bureau (抖淫视频) and ASEAN’s TNC Co-Chair, Dina Kurniasari, Director of ASEAN Negotiations, Ministry of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia.
Reports from the following 13 Subsidiary Bodies were presented to the TNC:
- Competition
- Customs Procedures and Trade Facilitation
- Economic and Technical Cooperation
- Financial Services
- Good Regulatory Practices
- Intellectual Property
- Legal and Institutional
- Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures
- Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
- Telecommunications
- Trade and Sustainable Development
- Trade in Goods
- Trade in Services
Key takeaways from the 9th TNC
- CNs agreed to work toward the goal of substantial conclusion in 2025, consistent with Ministers’ instructions from the 2023 ASEAN Economic Ministers’ (AEM) Meeting.
- To increase the level of in-person engagement, CNs committed to four “mini-rounds” between September 2024 to January 2025, engaging most of the Subsidiary Bodies.
- CNs discussed the TNC Report to Ministers for the 13th AEM – Canada Consultations Meeting on September 20th, 2025. The TNC agreed to clearly articulate both the level of progress achieved to date and the most pressing challenges.
The 10th TNC Meeting took place in-person from November 28-29, 2024, in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Key developments from the Subsidiary Bodies
Goods market access negotiations have not begun yet, as not all tariff and trade data have been exchanged between Canada and ASEAN. ASEAN members continue to update their tariff data to serve as a starting point for discussions. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures table continued to make progress in text-based negotiations and gained a greater understanding of their respective approaches.The Customs Procedures and Trade Facilitation table made good headway with their negotiations, meeting their 2024 target number of agreed articles. The Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures table continued to discuss matters in the chapter text (including on Certification, Proof and Verification of Origin, for which TNC guidance was sought) and product-specific rules of origin.The Good Regulatory Practices table has been focused on the substance and architecture of their chapter.
The Cross-Border Trade in Services, Investment and Financial Services tables discussed further about Mode 3 and modalities in respect of their chapters. Telecommunications negotiations are moving at a deliberate pace, cleaning up three articles during their last round of meetings.
Negotiations within the Intellectual Property, Competition, Economic and Technical Cooperation and Legal and Institutional subsidiary bodies are ongoing, and progress has been made on a few provisions during their last round of meetings.
The Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) table reported that they had their first co-chair call and, to meet the 2025 deadline, co-chairs agreed to focus on substance of the text during the initial phase of the negotiations, before moving on to the architecture of the chapter. Following this initial co-chair call in August, the first ASEAN-Canada FTA TSD Working Group meeting was held in Jakarta on September 24-27, 2024. Separate sessions were convened for the three areas (i.e. Inclusive Trade, Labour, and Environment) and leads presented Canada’s chapter text proposals. ASEAN Member States had an opportunity to ask detailed questions and seek clarifications on the scope and intent of the text. The second TSD Working Group meeting is tentatively scheduled to take place in early 2025.
Contact us
If you would like to comment on any of 抖淫视频's trade, investment or innovation programs, policies or services, please contact us at:
Trade Negotiations Division (TCD)
抖淫视频
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON K1A 0G2
Fax: 613-944-0757
Email: consultations@international.gc.ca
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