Peru hoping to sign FTA with Japan by 2011
Japan Times | Nov. 20, 2008
Peru hoping to sign FTA with Japan by 2011
LIMA (Kyodo) — Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde said Tuesday the country is hoping to achieve a bilateral free-trade agreement with Japan by 2011.
"I expect that there will be a free-trade agreement with Japan by 2011, when the term of the current administration expires," Garcia said in an interview in Lima.
"We want to recover our traditional cooperative ties and further develop them," said Garcia, although bilateral relations at one point deteriorated over how to treat Peru’s former leader, Alberto Fujimori, who fled to Japan in 2000 to escape a corruption scandal that toppled his regime.
But Garcia declined to specify when the country wants to launch negotiations.
"Japan has its position to consider," said Garcia, who will chair from Wednesday a two-day ministerial meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the Peruvian capital.
Earlier this month, Japan and Peru agreed to sign a bilateral investment treaty. The signing of the treaty between the two countries is scheduled to take place later this week on the sidelines of the APEC forum.
Peru has also been accelerating efforts to deepen trade ties with other major economic powers in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, including China, South Korea and the United States.
Garcia also said he believes the ongoing financial crisis cannot be remedied by only the Group of Eight major powers.
"It requires the participation of the Group of 20 economies" and both the world’s major industrialized and emerging heavyweights, including Brazil, China and India.
