Hanoi (VNA) – Foreign media outlets have runvarious headlines on the signing of the world’s largest trade deal – theRegional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), with ASEAN at the centreduring the grouping’s summit virtually hosted by Vietnam as ASEAN 2020 Chairlast week.

Its members comprise the 10 ASEAN member states andAustralia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea, which togetheraccounts for a third of the global population and 29 percent of the world’sGross Domestic Products (GDP).

The pact aims to liberalise trade and investment across theAsia-Pacific region by progressively lowering tariffs and cutting red tape, aswell as laying out new rules on government procurement, competition policy ande-commerce, said South China Morning Post.

The Hong Kong-based newspaper quoted Stuart Tait,Asia-Pacific regional head of commercial banking at HSBC, as saying that theRCEP may prove to be the tonic Asia needs to recover from the COVID-19-inducedslump.

“Intra-Asian trade, which is already larger than Asia’s tradewith North America and Europe combined, will continue to power global economicgrowth and pull the economic centre of gravity towards Asia,” Tait said.

The Asia Times said the trade pact is designed to reducecosts and time for companies and traders by allowing them to export their waresto any signatory nation without meeting separate requirements for each country.It is expected to come into force by 2021.  

Significantly, the RCEP represents the first-ever free tradeagreement among China, Japan and the RoK, Asia’s industrialised economicpowerhouses, it said.

It further noted that three Northeast Asian nations have beenin talks since 2012 about forging a trilateral free trade pact with littleprogress towards a deal in recent years as geopolitical rivalry has intensified.

The pact is not only expected to help ASEAN nations torecover next year from the pandemic’s economic devastation, it alsosymbolically highlights the importance of the region in what some analystsstill believe will become known as the “Asian Century.”

Forecasts suggest that the ASEAN bloc could be thefourth-largest economy in the world by the end of this decade. The region had acombined GDP of 2.57 trillion USD last year.

Cambodia's Khmer Times on November 16 stated that as anactive and responsible member, Vietnam has made great contributions to ASEAN."Vietnam had selected the theme “Cohesive and Responsive” for ASEAN 2020,expressing the chair’s desire for a united Asean to stand firm against theimpact of the international and regional situation."

Russia's Sputnik news agency said that Vietnam hassuccessfully fulfilled its task as ASEAN Chair in 2020, with its thoughtfulpreparation and selection of goals and priorities, leaving many important marks./.