General Review of AANZFTA - The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) - Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Executive Summary  

1. The Agreement Establishing the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area (AANZFTA)  has been in force for over seven years. When AANZFTA entered into force in 2010 it was a  significant step forward: it was ASEAN’s most comprehensive and highest quality FTA and remains the largest regional FTA for both Australia and New Zealand.  

2. AANZFTA includes provisions for regular reviews to improve its implementation. The AANZFTA  Parties envisaged that the Agreement would be a ‘living’ document and need periodic review and updating to ensure it remained the high quality and ambitious Agreement it was when it entered into force, as well as remaining modern and relevant to changing business and trade practices and the evolving regional economic architecture.  

3. The first stage of the General Review (this Report) is ‘backward-looking’, providing for a  retrospective assessment of the implementation of AANZFTA to date.  

Implementation experience has been positive to date  

4. In its first phase, AANZFTA has concentrated on effective implementation. It has been a key platform for Australia and New Zealand’s a trade and investment engagement with ASEAN and has been a useful ‘incubator’ for regional cooperation, technical capacity building and policy dialogue. This has contributed to the further development of ASEAN-centred regional economic integration, including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)  negotiations, which were launched in November 2012.  

5. AANZFTA has an active ongoing implementation agenda, supported by review mechanisms,  work programs, and institutional arrangements established under the Agreement. All Parties have valued the quality of their engagement in working collectively to support effective implementation. AANZFTA implementation to date has been relatively smooth but there have been challenges implementing Rules of Origin (ROO) requirements and transposition of  AANZFTA tariff and product-specific rules schedules, as well as delays in progressing the mandated reviews stipulated in the Agreement on non-tariff measures (NTMs), ROO, services, and investment.  

6. Parties have demonstrated their responsiveness to business needs by negotiating the First  Protocol to Amend the AANZFTA Agreement. The Protocol addressed practical issues raised by business by reducing the information requirements imposed on business when completing certificates of origin and simplifying the presentation of the Agreement’s ROO. The Protocol was signed on 26 August 2014 and has entered into force for all but one Party. ROO  implementation is now tracking more smoothly, as evidenced by the rising number of certificates of origin issued (see Chapter 6, Table 6.2 ‘Number of AANZFTA CoO Forms issued by Parties during 2012-16’), although there are a number of trade facilitation issues still requiring attention.  

7. The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) is an internationally harmonized nomenclature to classify goods for the purposes of levying tariffs and is updated every five years by the World Customs Organization, the last updates being in 2012 and 2017.  The process for transposition of these updates into AANZFTA’s tariff and product-specific rules schedules was identified as an area for improvement because delays in transposition were resulting in unnecessary complexity for business and customs officials. Parties have this year adopted Guidelines for transposing AANZFTA tariff and product-specific rules schedules, aimed at streamlining the transposition process and improving transparency.  

8. Progress on AANZFTA’s mandated reviews has been mixed (see Chapter 6 Table 6.1  ‘Progress with AANZFTA’s Mandated Reviews’). However, a report on the Review of NTMs with recommendations for actions to improve AANZFTA’s processes for addressing NTMs was presented to the 22nd ASEAN Economic Ministers – Closer Economic Relations (AEM-CER)  Consultations in September 2017.  

9. One of AANZFTA’s innovations was to incorporate economic cooperation as an integral part of the FTA, which has been implemented through the AANZFTA Economic Cooperation Support  Program (AECSP). There has been considerable progress under the AECSP and it has been one of the highlights of AANZFTA’s implementation. Since 2010, this cooperation has produced tangible outcomes in the areas of trade in goods, services, investment, intellectual property, and competition policy (see Chapter 4, Box 4.1 ‘Snapshot of key AECSP  achievements’).  

10. The AECSP has contributed to stronger government-to-government linkages between the  Parties; supported ASEAN priorities for establishing an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)  as well as supporting national reforms of ASEAN Member States (AMS) in line with AEC  commitments; contributed over time to increased business utilization of AANZFTA; and driven  AANZFTA’s built-in agenda, although not to the fullest extent possible because of delays in progressing aspects of the mandated reviews. The AECSP has contributed to building institutional and technical capacity in ASEAN and enhanced the capacity of AMS to implement other FTAs and to participate in FTA negotiations.  

11. Implementation under AANZFTA has primarily focused on government-to-government engagement, as governments are Parties to the Agreement. This has primarily been through the Agreement’s institutional structures whereby the FTA Joint Committee and its subsidiary bodies typically meet on an annual basis to set and progress a work program to implement  AANZFTA, including in relation to its built-in agenda (see Chapter 5, Figure 5.1 ‘Institutional structure under AANZFTA and associated structures’). There has been some limited engagement with the private sector, particularly in the context of addressing implementation issues relating to the First Protocol to Amend the AANZFTA Agreement.  

12. While engagement under AANZFTA’s institutional arrangements has been largely positive,  there is room for improvement and it is clear that the committees and sub-committees that have  met more regularly have achieved more significant progress in implementing the Agreement.  

This Management Assignment has been solved by our Management Experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.