Trade Minister Phil Goff hopes an ASEAN-Aust-NZ Free Trade Agreement may be signed by the end of the year. He is in Singapore this week for the annual ASEAN-CER Ministers meeting, which includes two days of negotiations towards the FTA. Officials have made good progress over the past 12 months and have resolved between 90-95% of the issues but the last 5% would be the most difficult with 12 countries at different stages of development.

AANZFTA would have a number of economic and strategic benefits for NZ. One is the scale of the potential market for NZ goods, services and investment. Asean economies represent a market of more than 575m people and are an increasingly important destination for NZ goods, service suppliers and outward investment.

Goff says they represent a global total trade of over $US1,400bn and are NZ’s third largest export market for merchandise goods ($NZ4.6bn in the year to June 2008). NZ’s trade with the region has been growing at 24% per year over the past three years.

The Minister says a key strategic goal for NZ is to be an integral part of the regionalisation underway in the Asia-Pacific. An FTA is seen as an important mechanism by which to deepen and sustain economic ties. Also on the agenda is a non-governmental study into the possibility of a Closer Economic Partnership in East Asia (CEPEA) - between NZ, Aust, the ASEAN countries, plus India, Japan, China and Korea.

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