The Director of Economic Governance at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Shiu Raj, says competition for trade will be one of the effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the biggest free trade agreements to date.
Agreed to earlier this month, the TPP covers 12 countries with a population of eight hundred million – double the EU’s market and responsible for 40 percent of world trade.
“You will basically see intensified trade between Northern America and Latin America and than Asia, Australia and New Zealand , when in fact the Pacific will find itself in the middle of it, so obviously it presents a number of opportunities and also it presents a number of challenges that PICs will really have to look towards addressing.”
The TPP members are the US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
