Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2021-01-18

Providing Tariff Concession to Mongolia under the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA)

- Mongolia has officially become a party to the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) on 29th September 2020 to which Sri Lanka has also been a Participating State. Accordingly, Sri Lanka as a Participating State, is supposed to reciprocally exchange tariff concessions with Mongolia. Mongolia, as similar to Bangladesh and Laos who are parties to the said trade agreement, is also entitled to acquire the same tariff concessions provided under the relevant agreement. As such, the proposal made by the Foreign Minister to provide the said tariff concessions and to conduct negotiations with Mongolia to identify the reciprocal tariff concessions to be further agreed on between parties, was approved by the Cabinet.