S. Korea, New Zealand to hold fresh round of FTA negotiations this week
Yonhap News, Seoul
S. Korea, New Zealand to hold fresh round of FTA negotiations this week
14 October 2014
SEJONG (Yonhap) — South Korea and New Zealand are set to hold a new round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) this week, the Seoul government said Tuesday, amid hopes from both sides that the latest round will be the last of its kind.
The FTA negotiations, the ninth of their kind, will be held Wednesday and Thursday in Seoul, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
"The two sides have agreed to work toward narrowing their differences on all remaining issues, including products, country of origin and cooperation, acknowledging a mutual need to conclude the Korea-New Zealand FTA talks at an early date," the ministry said in a press release.
The new round of Korea-New Zealand FTA talks comes about two months after the countries said they had again failed to close their gap on the level of market opening for the countries’ agriculture and fishery markets, which Seoul officials have called one of the few remaining issues.
The same issue had caused the two countries to suspend their bilateral FTA negotiations for over four years until they were resumed earlier in the year. The FTA talks were first held in June 2009.
South Korea’s Trade Minister Yoon Sang-jick, however, has said he believed the next round of negotiations with New Zealand could be the last of its kind.
"The negotiations with New Zealand are the closest to a conclusion. I believe one more round of negotiations may be enough," he had said while meeting with reporters last month.
In 2013, New Zealand was the world’s 44th-largest market for South Korean exporters with some US$1.49 billion worth of South Korean products shipped there. South Korea was New Zealand’s 41st-largest trading partner, purchasing about $1.39 billion worth of goods in the same year, according to the ministry.
