Beijing-backed free-trade pact to draw up blueprint by year-end

Steps are under way to draft a framework for a proposed free-trade pact that Beijing is championing as a rival bloc to a US-led trade initiative that excludes China.

The Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), encompassing members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) grouping, has received high-profile support from the Beijing leadership.

The study will draw on input from the Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac), with the goal of drawing up a blueprint for the trade pact by the end of this year, according to Doris Ho, the chairwomen of the advisory group comprising private-sector representatives that makes recommendations to the Apec economies.

"It's going to be a whole-year-long study, hopefully shorter," Ho said at a press conference by the council yesterday at the end of a four-day meeting in Hong Kong.

"We're going to get consultants and experts to study all the existing [free trade] agreements," she said.

"We're going to see what are the ones that are really effective. Eventually you take and pick from everybody's experience, and then we end up with a framework hopefully for what the FTAAP would look like. We have to give that in before the end of the year to the leaders."