ASEAN/Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement: Asia's regional trade is organised

The FTA, which aims to promote regional trade through the reduction and/or abolition of import tariffs on a wide range of products and opening up to direct investment, must enter into force 1^and January 2019.

At that time, Hong Kong and Singapore committed themselves to implementing a total abolition of customs duties on all products meeting the criteria of preferential origin.

For the other ASEAN member countries, the removal of import tariff barriers will be phased in: more than 75% of customs duties will be abolished within 15 years, 10 to 20% of duties will be reduced, and only 5 to 15% will not be affected.

What will be the conditions for benefiting from the preferential origin tariff preference?

Rules of originASEAN Free Trade Agreement – Hong Kong state that at least one of the following conditions allows preferential origin:

• 40% of the CIF value of the goods is of ASEAN origin and/or Hong Kong
• A processing operation in one of the signatory countries of the Agreement involves a change of tariff heading (customs classification).
• A processing operation « substantial » (in the customs sense) is carried out there.

Additional condition : deliveries must respect the direct transport rule between countries of origin and destination.

Proof of origin: the Certificate of origin Form AHK will justify preferential origin and will be used for customs import formalities.

* ASEAN (ASEAN) member countries on 01/01/2018: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Cambodia.

Since 1995 close partnership relations have been established with three other countries in the region: China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN Plus Three – APT).

In 2010, the European Union began a series of bilateral negotiations with the main ASEAN countries, more or less advanced to date (cf. International atmosphere of October 2016).