E-certificate of origin to facilitate China-Pakistan free trade

BEIJING: The certificate of origin of China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will be applied for online via branches of China Council for Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) from November 10.

“The EDI online application system of CCPIT is open to enterprises for free. Applicants can register their exports and apply for the issuance of the certificate of origin within just one working day, the same of which took them at least three days before,” said Zou Ruirui, director of the legal department of CCPIT Nanjing.

Certificate of origin of FTA, known as the “economic passport,” is also an important document for a Pakistani importer to be granted zero-tariff treatment or tariff concession when importing goods from China.

“The information exchange mechanism designed in the China-Pakistan FTA will also facilitate Customs clearance and reduce any possible fraud, which may otherwise occur due to the inefficiency of information sharing between the two parties,” Ruirui told China Economic Net.

According to Ruirui, enterprises based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province have exported pesticides to Pakistan and imported a range of textiles from there.

Statistics from the China’s Ministry of Commerce indicated that during the first half of 2021, Pakistan’s exports to China hit $1.73 billion, up 83 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

During the same period, bilateral trade increased to $12.6 billion, up 63 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

The China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement was reached in November 2006, and the nations signed the agreement on trade in service of the China-Pakistan FTA in 2009.

The second phase of the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2019, which greatly improved the trade liberalisation between the two countries.

China is currently Pakistan’s largest single trading partner; while Pakistan is China’s second largest trading partner in South Asia.