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Greater Arab Free Trade Area
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As of 1 January 2005, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (also referred to as GAFTA) has come into existence. GAFTA is a pact made by the Arab League to achieve a complete Arab economic bloc that can compete internationally. GAFTA is perhaps the beginning of a strong self sufficient Arab economy, and is relatively similar to ASEAN.
The Project was adopted in the Arab League Summit of Amman in 1997, with 17 Arab League members signing the pact.
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Members:
Jordan
Bahrain
United Arab Emirates
Tunisia
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Iraq
Oman
Qatar
Kuwait
Lebanon
Libya
Egypt
Morocco
Sudan
Yemen
Palestine
Possible future members:
The Greater Arab Free Trade Area was a project adopted in 1997, when 17 Arab League members agreed on decreasing the customs on local production and to make an Arab Free Zone for exports and imports between members. The members participate in 96% of the total internal Arab trade, and 95% with the rest of the world by applying the following conditions:
1-Instruct the inter-customs fees: To reduce the Customs on Arab products by 10% annually, the 14 Arab states reported their custom tariff programs to the Security Council of the Arab League to coordinate them with each others, except for Syria that is still using the Brussels tariffs system.
2-Applying the locality of the Arab products: All members have shared their standards and specifications to help their products move smoothly from one country to another. The League also created a project to apply the Arab Agriculture Pact: which is to share the standards of the agricultural sector and inject several more restrictions and specifications where all members have involved in them. The Arab league granted exceptions, which allow a customs rate for certain goods, to six members for several goods, however rejected requests by Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan for additional exceptions.
3-Private sectors: The League created a database and a service to inform and promote for the private's sectors benefits, and how there work would be in the GAFTA treaty is needed.
4-Communication: The Arab Economic and Social Council in its 65th meeting agreed on pointing a base for communication to ease communication between member states, and also to work to ease communication between the Private and public sectors to apply the Greater Arab Free Trade Area between members.
5-Customs Duties: In the 67th meeting the Arab Economic and Social Council agreed that the 40% decrease on customs on goods in the past 4 years of the GAFTA will continue and following the decisions of the Amman Summit of the Arab League, the members will put more efforts to eliminate all customs duties on local Arab goods.