Daily Times

The Certificate of Origin of China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will be applied for online via branches of China Council for Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) from 10 November, 2021, according to China Economic Net (CEN).

“The EDI on-line application system of CCPIT is open to enterprises for free. Applicants can register their exports and apply for the issuance of CO within just one working day, the same of which took them at least three days before,” said Zou Ruirui, director of the legal department of CCPIT Nanjing.

The CO of FTA, known as the “economic passport”, is also an important document for a Pakistani importer to be granted zero-tariff treatment or tariff concession when importing goods from China.

Zou said, “The information exchange mechanism designed in China-Pakistan FTA will also facilitate the customs clearance and reduce any possible fraud which may otherwise occur due to the inefficiency of information sharing between two parties.”

According to Zou, enterprises based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province have exported pesticides to Pakistan and imported a range of textiles from Pakistan.

Statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce indicated that during the first half of 2021, Pakistan’s exports to China hit $1.73 billion, up 83 percent year-on-year. During the same period, bilateral trade increased to $12.6 billion, up 63 percent year-on-year.

China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement was reached in November 2006, and the nations signed the Agreement on Trade in Service of the China-Pakistan FTA in 2009. The second phase of the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2019, which greatly improved the trade liberalization between the two countries.

China is currently Pakistan’s largest single trading partner; while Pakistan is China’s second largest trading partner in South Asia.