About 200 businesspeople and trade officials from China and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened at China-ASEAN Business Forum Monday at Beihai, a port city in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

They discussed the opportunities brought about by the Trade in Goods Agreement, which will take effect on July 20.

The Trade in Goods Agreement, the core part of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), will bring about duties reduction for about 7,000 categories of goods. China and ASEAN countries will start reducing duties this July.

China and six ASEAN members, including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, will start zero tariffs on most normal products by 2010. China and the other four ASEAN members will do the same by 2015.

Statistics from China's Customs Bureau showed that bilateral trade between China and the ASEAN has grown by 20 percent annually since 1990, reaching 105.9 billion US dollars in 2004, up 35 percent over the previous year.

As China's fifth largest export market and fourth largest import source, the ASEAN has enjoyed the position of being China's fifth largest trading partner for five consecutive years and its largest trading partner in the developing world.

In November 2002, Chinese and ASEAN leaders signed a Framework Agreement for Overall Economic Cooperation between the two sides, formally starting the process to build a free trade zone which covers a total of 1.7 billion people.

Source: Xinhua