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Geregistreerd op: 15 Feb 2019
Berichten: 206
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by Wang Xiuqiong
BEIJING Authentic DJ Chark Jersey , Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- There's no need to worry that an expected launch of work on a free trade zone would complicate the trade terrain in the Asia-Pacific. Instead, it would raise hopes for a solution of the current "spaghetti bowl" dilemma.
Attention has been heightening on the prospects of establishing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) as a series of high-profile Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings opened here this week. One of the meeting's outcomes, China expects, could be the start of the FTAAP process.
Those who see the move as China's challenge to the under-negotiation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and anticipate diplomatic wrestling over it will find their speculations unfounded and unnecessary.
A free trade area has long been a common vision for APEC economies, not a product of China's own wishful thinking.
The FTAAP is not a new idea, nor was it first brought onto the table by China. China suggested feasibility study on the FTAAP in February this year, but it was first proposed in 2004 and written into the declaration of the APEC leaders' meeting in 2006.
An annual meeting of APEC trade ministers in May reiterated the resolution to draft a roadmap for the FTAAP to be finalized within this year.
The idea gained traction as the region's mushrooming free trade pacts resulted in growing complexity and costs for exporters and importers. As a host of the 2014 APEC meetings, China's determination to push for concrete steps on the FTAAP only showcased its efforts to shoulder more international responsibility, since the country has been repeatedly urged to do so.
The impasse in the Doha round of global multilateral trade talks gave impetus to a proliferation of smaller free trade agreements (FTAs) in the region. They brought some benefits but also unwanted troubles: different tariff schemes, complicated rules of origin, trade discrimination over countries excluded from the FTAs, to list a few.
Against that backdrop, APEC economies' enthusiasm to integrate the varying and overlapping FTAs is understandable.
The TPP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are also part of the efforts to disentangle the "spaghetti bowl", but each of them involves only some of the region's economies.
If some argue a smaller number of participants could make talks easier, they are wrong. TPP negotiations have been stalled by U.S.-Japan divisions over farm-produce trade barriers, while different stages of development and varying understanding on tariff concessions made RCEP progress slower than expected.
If APEC leaders reach consensus on launching the FTAAP process in the following meeting week, it will lay a sound foundation for the regional free trade zone and send a heartening signal to the global free trade momentum.
However, the FTAAP is not a competitor or contradictory to the TPP or the RCEP. Achievements and lessons from both TPP and RCEP talks can contribute to the ultimate goal of establishing a free trade area that benefits all APEC economies. They can run in parallel and complement one another.
Therefore, information sharing and interaction should be strengthened among TPP, RCEP and other regional trade arrangements. Nor should anyone continue to pitch one of them against the FTAAP, because a better future of Asia-Pacific trade demands an open table and an open mind.
ROME, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- Italy will reduce its structural budget deficit by 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan wrote on Monday in response to Europe's request for clarifications on the country's draft budget.
"The Italian government is committed to adopting additional measures for 2015 in order to strengthen the fiscal effort already envisaged in Italy's draft budgetary plan," Padoan wrote in a letter to European Economic Affairs Commissioner, Jyrki Katainen.
Padoan said in the letter that more adjustment was not possible as the Italian GDP had fallen over 9 percent from its 2008 level. "The economy is in its third year of recession and there is a serious risk of stagnation and deflation. A fourth year of recession must be avoided in every way," he highlighted.
The Italian government had initially planned to reduce the structural deficit by only 0.1 percent in 2015 after passing a 36-billion-euro budget for next year. However, the EU had asked for a bigger effort of about 0.5 percent of GDP.
The adjustments included tax cuts and delaying the target date for achieving a structurally balanced budget by a year, to 2017 from 2016, in order to boost economic growth.
But in a letter sent from Brussels last week, the Mediterranean country was asked to clarify why its financial plan for 2015 did not comply with the EU goals of debt reduction.
Katainen, who is in charge of budget evaluations, wrote that Italy was planning a "significant deviation" from its previous plans towards a balanced budget in structural terms.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi over the past months has pushed for more expansionary measures and less austerity within the EU in order to revive European economies, especially those still struggling after several years of stagnation.
According to Padoan, the additional adopted measures would cost the Italian state some 4.5 billion euros (about 5.70 billion U.S. dollars), of which 3.3 billion euros would be taken from "an allocation to deficit reduction of the fund originally set for lowering the tax burden."
Another half a billion euros would come from "a reduction of the share of domestic resources allocated to the co-financing of European Union (EU) cohesion funds" and 0.73 billion from "an extension of the reverse-charge regime to the retail sector supported by a surcharge on excise taxes as a safeguard clause." (1 euro = about 1.27 U.S. dolla Citiz. Nike Air Max Sale Cheap Air Max 90 Cheap Nike Air Max Cheap Nike Air Max 95 Air Max Outlet Cheap Nike Air Max Cheap Nike Air Max 90 Cheap Nike Air Max 95 Cheap Nike Air Max 90 Air Max 95 Outlet |
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