Preparatory Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial Meeting to be Held

Background

1. In November 2012, at the ceremony to launch negotiations for the RCEP which was held during the ASEAN-related Summit Meetings, the leaders of the ASEAN member states and FTA partner countries announced the launch of RCEP negotiations. In May 2013, the first negotiation round was held in Brunei Darussalam. As of November 2020, 19 ministerial meetings and 31 negotiation rounds have been held.
    
2. In November 2019, the third RCEP summit meeting was held. In the Joint Leaders’ Statement issued at the meeting, the leaders stated that they noted that 15 RCEP Participating Countries have concluded text-based negotiations for all 20 chapters and essentially all their market access issues and tasked legal scrubbing by them to commence for signing in 2020, and they also confirmed that all RCEP Participating Countries will work together to resolve India’s outstanding issues in a mutually satisfactory way.
    
3. As efforts in 2020, ministerial meetings were held in June, August and October. The ministers reaffirmed that they will be committed to signing the RCEP Agreement by the end of 2020 and that the RCEP remains open for India.

Division in Charge

Economic Partnership Division, Trade Policy Bureau