The free trade agreement (FTA) between China and Ecuador has become effective on Wednesday, aiming to unleash the potential of trade and investment between the two countries and promote upgrading of bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
According to the agreement, China and Ecuador will cancel tariffs on 90 percent of tax items, of which about 60 percent will be canceled immediately after the agreement comes into effect.
When most Chinese products such as plastic products, chemical fibers and steel products enter the Ecuadorian market, Ecuador's import tariffs will be gradually cut to zero from the current five to 40 percent.
When Ecuador's major export products such as bananas, shrimps, fish and fish oil enter the Chinese market, China's import tariffs will be gradually reduced from the current five to 20 percent to zero.
China and Ecuador signed the FTA in May 2023, after a year of negotiations, making Ecuador China's 27th free trade partner, and China's fourth FTA partner in Latin America, after Chile, Peru and Costa Rica.
China is Ecuador's second-largest trading partner. In 2022, bilateral trade reached 13.1 billion U.S. dollars, up 19.7 percent year on year, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.
China-Ecuador free trade agreement takes effect
China-Ecuador free trade agreement takes effect
China's service outsourcing industry saw robust expansion in the first four months of this year, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday.
Chinese firms inked services outsourcing contracts worth a total of some 781.43 billion yuan (about 110 billion U.S. dollars) in the four-month period, up 14.4 percent year on year, according to the ministry.
The executed contract value stood at 520.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9 percent.
Of the total, the value of offshore service outsourcing contracts rose 8.6 percent year on year to 419.04 billion yuan.
Specifically, the value of offshore information technology outsourcing (ITO) services provided by Chinese companies jumped by 10.9 percent from a year earlier.
China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the United States and the European Union ranked the top three markets in terms of the fulfilled contract value of offshore outsourcing service, accounting for 54 percent of the total.
Chinese firms undertook nearly 80 billion yuan(about 14.93 billion U.S. dollars) worth of offshore service outsourcing contracts that were fulfilled with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, up 24 percent from a year ago, while the offshore outsourcing services for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries totaled 73.26 billion yuan, up 16.6 percent year on year.
Outsourcing refers to hiring an outside party to carry out services or produce goods typically undertaken by in-house employees. In China, service outsourcing is typically divided into three sectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.
In the January-April period, the service outsourcing industry welcomed about 301,000 new hires, with 84.7 percent of these individuals holding a bachelor's degree or above. The sector had over 16.17 million employees at the end of April, among whom some 10.56 million were graduates with a bachelor's degree or higher.
China's service outsourcing industry reports robust expansion
