China, S Korea aim to finish FTA talks

Negotiations expected to be completed by end of this year

Negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) between China and South Korea will be completed by the end of this year, Wang Shouwen, assistant minister of commerce, said on Monday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The FTA may be effective in the second half of 2015 if all goes well, Wang told reporters in Beijing.

On November 10, the two countries concluded substantive negotiations on the FTA, which covers 17 fields including e-commerce and government procurement, according to a statement released on the website of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

Going forward, detailed negotiations over rules overseeing trade in the 17 fields should be finalized in the rest of the year, Tu Xinquan, deputy director of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Monday.

On top of that, the FTA would be subject to legal and parliament reviews in both countries, before it comes into effect in the second half of next year, Tu noted.

The deal will remove tariffs on 90 percent of all products traded between China and South Korea, the MOFCOM statement said.

The Chinese and South Korean economies are quite complementary, with South Korea having advantages in electronics and chemical industries and China excelling in sectors such as textiles, He Maochun, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Monday.

In the first 10 months of this year, exports and imports between the two countries reached $239.98 billion, up 6.2 percent year-on-year, data from China's General Administration of Customs showed.

South Korean firms such as Samsung Electronics Co and Hyundai Motor Group could benefit from tariff cuts promised by the FTA, which may give them a competitive advantage over US, EU and Japan firms, Tu said.

Other major economies including the US and Japan have yet to sign a free trade agreement with China.

Currently, China has 20 FTAs under development, according to information on MOFCOM's website on Monday. In a fresh move to expand ties between China and its major trading partners, China and Australia on Monday announced the sealing of a landmark trade deal.