BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Aug 31- The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiators intensified their work to close the gaps between them as directed by their respective ministers at the 19th round of negotiations here, which ended Friday.
In a joint statement Friday, ministers of the 12 TPP member countries, who met here on Aug 22-23, said they had given guidance to the negotiators on achieving the ambitious agreement.
It said buoyed by the ministerial engagement and their commitment to actively guide the negotiations, negotiators advanced their technical work behind closed-doors for the last nine days on the texts covering market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition and environment.
“They had also made progress on the packages providing access to each other’s markets for goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry and government procurement.
“Their discussions both jointly and bilaterally were successful in identifying creative and pragmatic solutions to many issues and further narrowing the remaining work,” it said.
The statement said the 19th round of negotiations also saw negotiators in charge of labour issues continued their work on outstanding issues in the chapter.
Having identified pathways forward, negotiators will meet again inter-sessionally in the coming weeks to further their work, it said.
“The inter-sessional work is intended to further advance the negotiations in the lead up to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders meeting in Bali, Indonesia in October, on the margins of which TPPA leaders are expected to meet,” it said.
– BERNAMA
