New Zealand’s Trade Minister Tim Groser has stated that he is expecting bilateral negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership to take place in Kuala Lumpur soon for following up on the ministerial level talks that started in Maui, Hawaii.

HA NOI (VNS) — The signing of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the European Union and Viet Nam will bring significant long-term macro-economic benefits for Viet Nam, Fitch Ratings said. "The deal would help to boost foreign investment, productivity and exports, strengthening potential growth and external accounts," Fitch said in a report released this week. The agreement will eliminate almost all tariffs over a 10-year transition period, with most tariffs being removed once the agreement comes into effect.

HA NOI  (VNS) — Viet Nam and Japan would promote trade activities for farming, forestry and fisheries products between the two countries in the near future. Viet Nam's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat said this at the second high-ranking dialogue yesterday in Ha Noi with Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Hayashi Yoshimasa on development cooperation in agricultural sector between the two countries. Phat said Viet Nam has opened its market for beef, pork and poultry meat imported from Japan.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a free trade agreement involving ASEAN and six partners: China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India. Negotiations for the deal between the 16 participating nations began in 2012 and will wrap up by the end of this year. Vo Tri Thanh, deputy director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), spoke to the media about the RCEP's likely impacts. What will be the impact of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership on Viet Nam's economy?

HA NOI (VNS) — Experts yesterday expressed doubts about Viet Nam's ability to ease its business environment to the average level of doing business in ASEAN-6 by the end of the year. They were discussing targets set by Government Resolution No 19/NQ-CP on improving the business environment and national competitiveness in 2015 and 2016 by reducing costs, time and risks involved . By the end of this year, the Department of Customs plans to reduce time spent on export customs procedures to 13 working days and to 14 working days for imports.

Trade Negotiations Minister Tim Groser expects to resume bilateral negotiations towards the Trans Pacific Partnership in two weeks in Kuala Lumpur, and talks have continued since the last ministerial meeting in Maui, Hawaii. "Already there are numerous conversations going on. I'm having meetings all the time...constant conversations, telephone conversations, emails." There is no date set yet for the next collective ministerial meeting but he said the Maui meeting created a sense of purpose.

After the European Union and its fifth-largest trading partner Vietnam announced last week that they had agreed in principle to lift most tariffs on goods in the coming years, China and the EU should seriously think about removing their customs barriers to boost the combined economies of roughly 2 billion consumers. On Aug 4, the EU said it would eliminate its duties over a seven-year period and Vietnam agreed to liberalize trade in financial services, telecommunications, transport, and postal and courier services over 10 years.

Last week, Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Economics Sofyan Djalil said that Indonesia is now open to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement following the Trade Promotion Authority victory U.S. President Barack Obama secured in Congress last month “Many policymakers in Asia didn’t believe that President Obama will get the mandate,” Djalil told Reuters in an interview last Friday. “TPP is now getting closer and closer to reality, and now the option is to join it or you’re left out.”

Despite the failure of the latest Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in Hawaii, a conclusion of the potentially world-changing trade pact remains on the cards over the next 12 months, said former U.S. trade representative Ron Kirk. "I've been in these negotiations and I know the worst thing to do is to put an artificial timeline on it," Kirk, the former Democratic mayor of Dallas and once America's chief trade negotiator, said in an exclusive interview with CNBC at the weekend.

Following the conclusion of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement negotiations in July and expectations that it will be signed later this year, Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez, a free trade agreement specialist at Belgian law firm A–Law International and the firm’s managing partner Patricia Leers discuss the challenges facing Vietnamese companies once this agreement takes effect. The twelfth round of free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations between the EU and Vietnam was held in Hanoi in March 2015.