Singapore also turned to Canada and proposed a free trade agreement. Footnote 22 On June 5, 2000, both sides announced that the two countries would begin exploring the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement. Footnote 23 On October 21, 2001, the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in China, Singapore and Canada announced the official opening of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. Formal negotiations began in January 2002. Six rounds of negotiations took place until October 2003, but negotiations then stagnated. At the 2006 APEC Ministerial Conference, the two sides agreed to resume negotiations and a seventh round was held at the end of February 2007. Footnote 24 At the end of that meeting, Canada issued a press release indicating that it was not yet ready to conclude this free trade agreement. A new round of negotiations took place in 2007, but no progress has been made since then. Footnote 25 Negotiations have been suspended by mutual agreement since November 2009.Footnote 26 „It is important that African countries recognize that signing a trade pact is not the same as achieving free trade,” said Disenyana. Paul Brenton and Miriam Manchin call for reform of the EU`s preferential trade agreements. The rules of origin of EU trade agreements should be completely revised. On the other hand, India is at the end of the Asean Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement to which it joined in 2010. India`s total trade deficit with Asean increased from $8 billion in 2009-10 to about $22 billion in 2018-19.
Grieco, Joseph M. 1990. Cooperation between nations: Europe, America and non-tariff barriers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. In this first attempt at systematic analysis of successful and unsuccessful negotiations on free trade agreements (FTAs), we distinguish between couples of countries that have initiated negotiations but have not concluded couples who have not entered into negotiations, although previous studies treat both groups in the same way as „absences of free trade agreements”. Comparison of successful and unsuccessful negotiations reveals some factors that could influence the outcome of the negotiations. We examined three compassionate factors related to the negotiations: (i) the existence of diplomatic representation in the negotiating partners; (ii) reciprocity of tariff reduction under free trade agreements; and (iii) the number of parallel negotiations conducted by a country. Although our sample size is small – Singapore has conducted only 25 negotiations on free trade agreements (17 successful cases and 8 unsuccessful cases) – a comparison between the two groups makes it possible to state the following. First, if negotiators have diplomatic representations in the partner country, they are more likely to conclude negotiations on free trade agreements between the two countries. Second, if the „Most Favoured Nation (MFN) quotas” between the negotiating parties are similar, they are more likely to end the FTA negotiations between the two parties. If a country conducts several parallel negotiations on free trade agreements, the (less important) negotiators of the first negotiators could be overwhelmed by a new, larger negotiating partner. According to the PHD Chamber report, India`s imports from asean countries increased sharply relative to its exports to those countries after the signing of these agreements.
