China gets November deadline to help restart ITA talks

China is under renewed pressure to push for the expansion of tariff cuts on information and communications technology products at the next Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leaders' meeting, which will be held in Beijing in November.

It has been about eight months since talks in Geneva were suspended on November 21 after China, the world's biggest exporter and importer of hi-tech goods, refused to pare down the number of products it wanted excluded from an expanded Information Technology Agreement (ITA), a tariff-cutting pact initiated under the World Trade Organisation.

There were hopes that a breakthrough could be reached during the sixth United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing earlier this month.

However, no such breakthrough was realised by trade negotiators from the world's two-largest economies.

At the conclusion of the two-day affair on July 10, a joint statement from the two countries acknowledged that they "held constructive discussions" on expanding the ITA.

"Both sides commit to continue the discussions within the next few weeks, to create conditions to restart plurilateral negotiations," they said.

An expanded ITA is forecast to boost global trade in information and communications technology products to more than US$5 trillion this year from US$1.2 trillion when the deal took effect in 1996, US think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated.