Colombia, Mexico sign agreements on deepening FTA project
Xinhua | April 09, 2010
Colombia, Mexico sign agreements on deepening FTA project
Colombia and Mexico agreed on Thursday to move ahead on the consolidation of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) project to boost trade between the two countries.
Luis Guillermo Plata, minister of Colombian Trade, Industry and Tourism,and Beatriz Leycegui, vice minister of Mexican International Commercial Negotiations, signed altogether five agreements on behalf of their respective governments.
In August 2009, the two countries concluded the negotiations on deepening the implementation of the FTA project to meet the new commercial realities of both economies.
Regarding the Market Access, Plata said, the new agreements would allow the preferential access of such Colombian products to Mexico as meat, powdered milk, cheese, sweets, bakery products, palm oil, beverages and cigarettes.
These products, he said, used to be excluded from the duty exemption program. The new agreements will also have a "growing clause" with which the two countries would review the possibility of improving the commercial access conditions for the goods in the future.
Currently, Mexico is a very important commercial partner of Colombia, with the trade volume close to 2.7 billion U.S. dollars and bilateral investments estimated at 410 million dollars in 2008.
