The Free Trade Agreement between the Government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Georgia comes into force and is implemented on January 1, 2018.

China-Georgia FTA is the first FTA China has signed with Eurasian countries as well as the first Free Trade Agreement China has initiated and achieved since the Belt and Road Initiative was put forward. The implementation of this FTA is a specific move to practice the 19th CPC National Congress’ “facilitating the establishment of free trade areas and building an open world economy.” It is of great importance to promote the strategy of Free Trade Zone and the Belt and Road Initiative.

The negotiation on China-Georgia FTA was launched in December 2015, and the agreement was signed in May 2017. The leaders of China and Georgia had closely followed it all the time and repeatedly showed their strong will to launch and accelerate the negotiations. This has greatly promoted the negotiations and quickened the agreement’s coming into force.

After the agreement has gone into effect, in terms of the trade in goods, Georgia will impose zero tariffs on 96.5% of China's products immediately, covering 99.6% of the total imports from China; China will impose zero tariff on 93.9% of Georgia’s products, covering 93.8% of China's total imports from Georgia, of which 90.9% (taking up 42.7% of imports) will have zero tariffs immediately and the remaining 3% (taking up 51.1% of imports) will gradually have zero tariff within 5 years. In terms of trade in services, both sides will further open their markets to each other on the basis of their WTO commitments. In addition, both sides have reached broad consensuses in many fields such as environment and trade, competition, intellectual property, investment and e-commerce.

China-Georgia FTA will further improve the liberalization and facilitation of bilateral trade, and will build a more open, transparent and stable trading environment for enterprises, providing more quality and cheap products and services for people from both countries. By taking the opportunity of the effect taking of the agreement, China and Georgia will comprehensively improve both sides’ practical cooperation level, thus firmly promoting the Belt and Road construction and achieve common prosperity.

The agreement’s text, schedule of tariff concessions and schedule of trade in services concessions can be found at the China FTA Network (http://fta.mofcom.gov.cn).