15 November 2020, Ten ASEAN nations, plus five other Asia-Pacific countries, have signed the world's biggest trade deal in terms of GDP. The pact is expected to drive economic growth in a region hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

The RCEP deal, signed eight years after negotiations first began, covers 2.2 billion people and a third of the world's economy. Fifteen nations in the Asia-Pacific region have entered into the world's largest free-trade agreement, which they hope will accelerate the recovery of their economies, ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

 

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, was signed on Sunday on the sidelines of the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), held via videoconference due to the pandemic. The virtual summit was hosted by Vietnam which held the rotating chair position in the run-up to the event.

 

It includes the 10 member states of ASEAN; Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei — along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, celebrated the signing of the deal in a speech given at the summit, saying: "The signing of the RCEP is not only a landmark achievement of East Asian regional cooperation but also a victory of multilateralism and free trade."