The enforcement of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in services area between Pakistan and China from October 10 is the latest achievement in FTA.

“China has a large market with demands at different levels, which would make it easier to seek economic cooperation with a variety of countries at different levels,” said Xu Ningning, executive secretary general of China-ASEAN at the 6th China-ASEAN Expo held in Nanning, capital of south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

“China’s participation in building FTAs has demonstrated the country’s efforts in realizing free trade, especially in a time of increasing protectionism and trade frictions,” he said. According to FTA, in trade Pakistan will open 102 sub-departments in 11 service departments and China will open 28 sub-departments in six service departments. For China, more FTAs means more business opportunities and better trade environment, especially for those with less advantages in outbound business in the past years.

The trend of economic globalization and regional integration would not end or slow down because of the financial crisis, and only economies that followed the trend would prosper, said Li Ruogu, Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of China. The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), which is to be established on Jan. 1, 2010, is under heated discussion during the 6th China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, the Xinhua news reported.

Guangxi, China’s south region bordering Vietnam, had already borne fruits from the establishment of CAFTA. The region’s trade volume with ASEAN jumped from 630 million U.S. dollars in 2002 when the building of CAFTA started, to 3.99 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, official data showed.