YANGON, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar is planning to promote trade with ASEAN countries and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) by reducing tariffs, official media reported Thursday.
In accordance with the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, Myanmar's trade with ASEAN countries amounted to over 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first three months of the current 2017-2018 fiscal year, of which export accounted for 892 million U.S. dollars, while the import took 1.6 billion U.S. dollars.
Their trade hit over 9.6 billion U.S. dollars in last FY 2016-17.
Meanwhile, the country's trade with China's Hong Kong SAR was 20 million U.S. dollars in first quarter of FY 2017-18 while it was 239 million U.S. dollars in last FY 2016-2017.
A plan to set up ASEAN-Hong Kong free trade area is underway.
China, South Korea, India and Australia have joined in ASEAN's free trade agreements (FTA) so far.
ASEAN FTA aims at promoting local manufacturing industries, increasing ASEAN's competitive edge as a production base in the world market through the elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers and attracting more foreign direct investment to the ASEAN region.
