China Will Adopt More Preferential Duties to Enlarge Foreign Business and Trade

On December 17, the Ministry of Finance declared that our country would further adjust the import and export duty regulations from January 1, 2009 and would adopt a series of more preferential measures on duties to enlarge foreign business and trade cooperation with relevant countries and regions.

According to relevant persons in charge of the Ministry of Finance in the interview by reporter, under the condition that the current international financial crisis further spreads, and our foreign trade suffers impact, it is very important to give full play to duty functions in promotion and reinforcement of bilateral and multilateral trade cooperation and keep stable development of foreign trade.

According to this person, in 2009, on base of a series of previous free trade agreements and preferential duty agreements signed with relevant countries and regions, our country will further adopt more preferential conventional tariff and concessionary rate than the most favored nation tariff to promote trade cooperation with relevant countries and regions and realize mutual benefits and joint development.

The concrete measures are as follows: the first is to continue the China- ASEAN free trade conventional tariff on some tax products manufactured in ten countries of ASEAN and conduct the third step of normal tax reduction. According to the Ministry Of Finance, after tax reduction, there are about 6750 tax items adopting the conventional tariff, with the average preferential margin of about 80% compared with the most favored nation tariff.

The second is to continue the China- Chile free trade conventional tariff on some products manufactured in Chile and conduct the fourth overall tax reduction;

The third is to continue the China- Pakistan free trade conventional tariff on some products manufactured in Pakistan and conduct the third overall tax reduction. After tax reduction, there are about 6191 tax items with the conventional tariff lower than the corresponding most favored nation tariff, with the average preferential margin of about 37%.

The fourth is to continue the China- New Zealand free trade conventional tariff on some products manufactured in New Zealand and conduct the second overall tax reduction. After tax reduction, there are about 6989 tax items adopting the conventional tariff, with the average preferential margin of over 40%.

The fifth is to continue the “Asia Pacific Trade Agreement” conventional tariff on 1751 products manufactured in Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Laos, with the applicable rate for some tax items further reduced and the average preferential margin of about 23%.

The sixth is to continue zero duty on the products manufactured in Hong Kong and Macao. According to existing origin standard establishment conditions, there will be 1539 products and 681 products with zero duties separately for Hong Kong and Macau form January 1, 2009.

The seventh is that our country will firstly conduct tax reduction on some products manufactured in Singapore in accordance with the China - Singapore free trade convention form January 1, 2009. Compared with the China - ASEAN free trade convention (Singapore is also a member of ASEAN), we have 708 items with more rapid tax reduction speed for Singapore, and the rest tax items have the same tax reduction extent with that in the China- ASEAN free trade convention. After tax reduction, there are 2739 tax items adopting the China- Singapore free trade conventional tariff, with the average preferential margin of about 75%.
In addition, our country will continue the preferential tariff on partial products from 41 least developed countries, including 4 Southeast Asian countries such as Laos, 31 African countries such as Sudan and other countries such as Yemen in 2009, and most of the products enjoy zero rate. The scope of tax items covers most of products imported from the above countries.