China and Peru begun upgrading of their FTA

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

On November 17, 2018, Peru and China signed a memorandum agreeing to begin negotiations to optimize their Free Trade Agreement (FTA), a process that will begin in the first half of 2019. The signing of the document was in charge of the Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism of Peru, Rogers Valencia, and China's Trade Minister, Zhong Shan.

Peru expects to modernize its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China in order to strengthen their already excellent bilateral relationship."We are sure that there is ample potential to improve bilateral trade and investment flows between our countries”, Valencia said.

The China-Peru FTA was signed in April, 2009 and has been enforced since May 2010. It is the first comprehensive FTA China has signed with a Latin American country. China-Peru FTA has maintained sound development and made remarkable results since it was implemented, driving rapid development of bilateral trade and economic relations. According to the statistics by China’s Customs, China-Peru bilateral trade amounted to US$16.02 billion in 2015, 2.2 times that before the FTA was carried out. At present, China has become Peru’s largest trade partner, largest export market and largest import source and Peru has become China’s fifth largest trade partner in Latin American region.