Recently, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao and Minister of Trade and Industry of Singapore Gan Kim Yong, on behalf of the governments of China and Singapore respectively, signed the Protocol Between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Republic of Singapore on Further Upgrading of the China-Singapore FTA.

China and Singapore jointly announced the launch of further upgrading negotiations on December 8, 2020. When meeting with Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong in November 2022, President Xi Jinping said that the two sides needed to move faster to complete the subsequent negotiations for FTA upgrading, to further liberalize bilateral trade and investment. Over the past three years, working teams of both countries conducted rounds of intensive negotiations and successfully concluded all negotiations. In the protocol, China and Singapore make services and investment openness commitments in the form of negative lists, creating broader space for investors and service providers, and further expanded cooperation in emerging fields such as the digital economy.

The signing of the protocol is a new milestone in China-Singapore trade and economic relations. It will further unleash the potential of bilateral trade in services and investment cooperation, and generate more solid institutional safeguards for business activities in each other’s market. In the next step, China and Singapore will expedite domestic legal procedures to ensure early entry into effect of the protocol.