---

About RCEP

What is RCEP?  

              The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement is an agreement to broaden and deepen ASEAN’s engagement with Australia, China, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. Together, these RCEP participating countries account for about 30% of the global GDP and 30% of the world population. The RCEP negotiations commenced in early 2013 and entered into force on 1 January 2022 for ten original parties: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. RCEP then entered into force for the Republic of Korea on 1 February 2022, for Malaysia on 18 March 2022 and for Indonesia on 2 January 2023. Once ratified by all initial signatories, RCEP will be the world’s largest free trade agreement by members’ GDP.

              Why is RCEP important?  

The objective of the RCEP Agreement is to establish a modern, comprehensive, high-quality, and mutually beneficial economic partnership that will facilitate the expansion of regional trade and investment and contribute to global economic growth and development. Accordingly, it will bring about market and employment opportunities to businesses and people in the region. The RCEP Agreement will work alongside and support an open, inclusive, and rules-based multilateral trading system.

              What is the Scope of RCEP?  

The scope of the RCEP negotiating areas is comprehensive and include the following:

• Tariff elimination for trade in goods, including the related chapters of rules or origin, customs procedures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures and trade remedies;

• Liberalization of services sectors, including financial services, telecommunications services and movement of natural persons;

• Promotion, facilitation, protection and liberalization of investment;

• Competition policy (countries are allowed to implement national laws related to state-owned enterprises), intellectual property rights, electronic commerce and government procurement (no market access, only for information exchange and promotion of transparency measures),

• Economic and technical cooperation and SMEs; and

• Legal and institutional issues.

What are the benefits of RCEP?  

The major beneficiary of this mega FTA will be ASEAN. Based on World Bank data in 2020, the 15 RCEP Participating Countries (RPCs) account for:

• A total of 29.46% of the global population or 2.3 billion people.
  • Combined Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of US$25.9 trillion (RM109.6 trillion) or 30.64% of the world’s GDP.
  • Accounts for US$10.09 trillion (RM42.73 trillion) or 28.33% of global merchandise trade.
  • The five ASEAN FTA Partners (AFPs) are major investors in ASEAN contributing US$23.7 billion (RM100.37 billion) or 17.26% of the total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flow of US$137.3 billion (RM581.45 billion).

RCEP benefits the companies in signing countries by:

• Offering market access to a third of world’s population where intra-regional sourcing of raw materials at competitive price,
• Integrating supply chain within the RCEP region,
• Promoting greater transparency, information sharing, trade facilitation, economic cooperation, standardization of international rules relating to E-commerce,
• Mutually recognizing international standards, technical regulations trade, and
• Providing clarity in protection of intellectual property rights.

---

Membership

Why joining us as member?  

Access
Involvement in Chamber activities provides rare access to top business leaders, key Government agencies, officials in ASEAN and China

Business Networking
The Chamber provides the members with access to the latest business information and an avenue to develop good business contacts locally and internationally.

Dialogue
The Chamber regularly expresses the voice of our members and business community to Government or policy makers on issues related to trade and industry. This provides opportunities for members’ views and concerns to be heard.

Information & Consultancy
The Chamber, through its Sectoral Committees, provides extensive business information service to its members. Direct consultancy is also available on major issues. The Chamber organizes regular dialogues/events to keep members abreast with changes in local/international policies, regulations as well as trade incentives.

Membership Category

1. Corporate
2. Individual

Click the link below to join us and we will get in touch with you
https://forms.gle/54xd9JkjXkwg2Toq6