Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing has said the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal was still on track and it would be signed by the end of 2020.
RCEP brings together the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The countries have made an offer to India, which pulled out of talks last November, to see if it is prepared to rejoin discussions.
“If India is unable to rejoin the discussions in the coming month, then plans will continue to proceed with the legal scrubbing for the preparation for the siging at the end of the year,” Chan told reporters.
“At this point in time we are still on track for the signing by the RCEP countries at the end of the year,” he added.
Chan was speaking to reporters on Sunday to outline plans to restart Singapore’e economic activity after curbs put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Chan said that he and his counterparts from other nations agree that recovery from the current crisis will require long-term cooperation.
Top Japan negotiator says it is not considering signing RCEP trade pact without India
“We need to not just manage the current situation, which is the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, but we also need to give confidence for the longer term economic prospects for our regional countries,” he said.
This will require doing “new things to allow our economies to recover and to grow”, such as by participating in more regional agreements, said Mr Chan.
Separately he said troubles at Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, one of Asia’s top oil traders, were not a reflection of the wider situation in the Singapore oil trading market. However, he said the wider oil trading market will be hurt by global oversupply issues.