Cambodia Ratifies Free Trade Agreement with China

 ASEAN Briefing, 

13 Sept 2021

On September 9, 2021, the National Assembly of Cambodia ratified the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with China, which aims to increase the trade of goods by reducing and eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers.

The Cambodia-China FTA extends across a wide range of sectors, including trade, tourism, investment, transportation, and agriculture. China will provide duty-free status to some 98 percent of imports from Cambodia whereas Cambodia has agreed to exemptions of up to 90 percent of its imports from China.

Although the vast majority of Cambodia’s exports to China are tariff-free through the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), the CCFTA extends tariff-free trade to over 340 products, such as seafood products, garlic, cashew nuts, and dried chili, among others.

Through the CCFTA, Cambodia hopes to increase bilateral trade with China to US$10 billion by 2023, up from US$8 billion in 2020. This is a timely development for Cambodia as businesses continue to reel from the European Union’s (EU) withdrawal of the Everything but Arms (EBA) status in 2020. The EBA status was withdrawn because of what the EU perceived as serious and systemic violations of human rights in Cambodia. The EBA provides 49 of the world’s poorest countries duty-free access to EU markets

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