Malaysia would sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with Japan by December this year.
It covers a wide range of economic activities including intellectual property, competition policy, enhancement of business environment, and bilateral cooperation in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and commodities, education and human resource development, information and communications technology, science and technology, small and medium enterprises, tourism and environment.
It also outlined an FTA that will pave the way for Malaysia to lift heavy tariffs on Japanese cars within 10 years.
On its part, Japan will eliminate tariffs on most farm and fishery products within 10 years.
One thing I don't understand is why only cover farm and fishery products for Malaysia. Ex-Prime Minister Dato Seri Dr Mahathir is correct that why should we open our automobile market to certain country yet we unable to export our own automobile to the same country. Perhaps MITI has negligent in the negotiation or has intentionally overlook such important topic.
Whether Proton able to gain market shares or not is another issue. The responsible of the official in charge of negotiation is make sure our country got a fair deal. Apparently the official in charge fail to get a fair deal to our country.
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