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The following is issued by the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr Joseph WP Wong, in response to the APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Statement on the Doha Development Agenda today (June 2):
"We welcome the APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) Statement on the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), which reaffirms the strong commitment of the APEC economies to work towards a successful conclusion of the Round by the end of the year.
The MRT Statement is also significant in pointing to the need to agree on the modalities in agriculture and NAMA (non-agricultural market access) by the end of June, which is critical to move the Doha round forward.
At the APEC MRT session, Hong Kong also indicated its keen interest in the negotiations in the Services and Rules areas. On Services, we are ready to follow the agreement at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference last year and will put forward our improved offer by the end of July. We hope our trading partners will also do the same.
On Rules, in particular anti-dumping, we will continue to negotiate in earnest and agreed to improve the current rules so that they will facilitate rather than frustrate trade and that whatever benefits arising from improvements to market access will be fully realised.
Hong Kong will continue to play a constructive role in the DDA negotiations and we firmly believe that Hong Kong as well as other economies will stand to benefit significantly from a successful conclusion of the Round.Ħħ
Ends/Friday, June 2, 2006
Issued at HKT 18:36
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