The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is playing a crucial role in boosting the ASEAN economic integration into the world economy, Cambodia’s Minister of Commerce Pan Sorasak has said.
“The world’s largest free trade agreement will bolster resilient, sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the region and resist the trend of anti-globalization and protectionism,” he said in a speech at the launch of a book titled “RCEP: Part I: Geo-Political, Geo-Economic and Legal Analysis” in Phnom Penh recently.
The RCEP free trade deal comprises 15 Asia-Pacific countries including 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — and their five trading partners, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Sorasak said the RCEP, covering 2.3 billion people, or 30 percent of the world’s population, contributed 26.2 trillion U.S. dollars, about 30 percent of global GDP, and accounted for 28 percent of global trade in goods and services, and 32.5 percent of global foreign direct investment inflows.
He said the mega-trade pact will help Cambodia graduate from its least-developed country status by 2027 and achieve its goals of becoming an upper middle-income country by 2030 and a high-income nation by 2050.—APP
