ASEAN Secretary-General expects wider product availability across region under FTA upgrade

ASEAN secretary-general Kao Kim Hourn said he looks forward to seeing a broader range of product availability in both China and the Southeast Asian region following the recent upgrading of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA).

At the 27th ASEAN-China Summit held in Vientiane, Laos on Thursday, the parties announced they had agreed to the FTA to to Version 3.0, providing an institutional guarantee for the two sides to jointly build a hyper-scale market, a significant step toward leading economic integration in East Asia.

In an interview with China Central Television (CCTV), Kao said this upgrade will promote mutually beneficial cooperation between ASEAN and China in various fields.

"Well, after almost two years of negotiations, both sides, ASEAN and China, have already reached substantial outcomes on the negotiation for the upgrade of ASEAN-China FTA 3.0. So this is a very substantial outcome. This will be a major contribution to the economic cooperation between ASEAN and China because ASEAN and China are the largest trade partner of each other. So we expect with the upgrade, we hope that trade, investment and tourism will continue to increase even more. And I think that would be a positive and major development and transformation between ASEAN and China in terms of working together in the area of economic cooperation," he said.

He also expressed expectations that the upgrade will promote trade facilitation and drive cooperation between ASEAN and China in areas such as logistics and the service industry.

"Open trade means that the products will become much more available on both sides. And I think, for example, ASEAN has been exporting a lot of agricultural products to China. And with this upgrade, we will see more flows of goods on both sides, goods and services. So this is the kind of thing we hope to see. At the same time, of course, we want to see more cooperation in the tourism sector, we want to see more investment from both sides," he said.

China and ASEAN, together accounting for a quarter of the world's population, have been each other's largest trading partners in the last four years. In 2023, China's investment in ASEAN increased by as much as 44.6 percent, while accumulated two-way investment between China and ASEAN countries has surpassed 380 billion U.S. dollars.

ASEAN Secretary-General expects wider product availability across region under FTA upgrade

The death toll from a shopping mall fire in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi climbed to 60 after at least 30 bodies were recovered from a shop of the multi-story building, officials said on Wednesday.

The bodies were recovered from the mezzanine floor of the shopping mall, said senior police official Syed Asad Raza, adding that several people are still missing and a search operation is continuing to recover them.

He said that the rescue efforts are being carried out using sophisticated machines, and debris is being removed from the collapsed sections of the building.

The official said that the rescue workers are facing difficulties reaching some parts of the building due to smoke and heat inside the damaged structure, adding that one part of the building is cleared and the other two parts are being combed to rescue people under the rubble.

Karachi Commissioner Syed Hassan Naqvi said that an investigation into the incident has been launched as authorities look into the fire from multiple angles.

Death toll from shopping mall fire in Pakistan's Karachi rises to 60