The 6th round of negotiations on Sino-Swiss FTA was held in Davos of Switzerland from September 4th to 6th. China and Switzerland fully exchanged views on the issues of FTA tax reduction in goods trade, service trade, rules of origin, customs cooperation and trade convenience, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technological barrier to trade, articles on legal issue and institutions, intellectual property rights, policies for competition, trade remedy, dispute settlement as well as economic and technical cooperation, and reached a series of consensus. The negotiation has made a great progress.

China and Switzerland are important trading partners with their economies highly complementary. According to the statistics of China Customs, China-Swiss bilateral trade volume reached, in 2011, US$30.9 billion in total, up by 54% year on year; and in the first seven months of 2012, trade volume reached US$15.53 billion. Among that, China’s imports from Switzerland amounted to US$13.48 billion with major commodities of watches, machineries, medical products, self-control instruments and tools for measurement and testing analysis, and machines for metal processing etc.; and China’s exports to Switzerland registered US$2.05 billion with major commodities of garments, shoes, automatic data processing equipments, shipping and medical products etc.

Chen Deming, Chinese Minister of Commerce, jointly declared with Schneider Ammann, Swiss Minister of Economy to launch FTA bilateral negotiation during World Economic Forum in Davos in January of 2011, and five rounds of negotiations had been held afterwards.