By Samia Khalid ISLAMABAD, May 30, (INP-WealthPK): The joining of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) by Pakistan will help integrate its trade and increase its exports to other countries, reports WealthPK. The RCEP is a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) involving 50 Asia Pacific countries that account for 29% of global Gross Domestic Product. The goal of the RCEP is to ease restrictive and discriminatory aspects of the trade, market access obligations, services and investment for member countries. RCEP also rids the disadvantaged population of the designated monopolies and extends support to member countries in producing effective labour, cleaning the environment and ensuring openness and corruption-free procedures. Regional cooperation is very crucial for the exports of Pakistan. It will help Pakistan to get into mega-regional trade, which can enable it to develop networks and increase its share in the global supply chain. The membership of RCEP would help Pakistan to raise its exports by 16%. The competition in certain products would grow its market. Sources said that the access of Pakistan to western markets would improve owing to multiple FTAs between RCEP countries and the developed nations. They said that Pakistan’s participation in the RCEP might serve as a conduit for expanding market access to a number of industrialised countries, currently not having any agreement with it. The RCEP countries are major investors in Pakistan’s greenfield projects, directly funded by foreign donors. These countries have spent $21 billion on the execution of 96 projects between 2010 and 2019. These projects have produced over 28,000 employment opportunities, mostly in the communication, automotive and renewable energy industries in the country. Around 95% of this investment was made by China, Japan and South Korea. It shows that there is tremendous untapped potential for investment in Pakistan by other RCEP countries. Sources said that FTAs, being a part of the country’s trade and investment strategy, would detail the types of incentives to be offered to the industrial sector. They added that the elimination of tariffs for neighbouring countries would improve not only their exports but also Pakistan’s prospective investment, as all countries would prefer members of the group for the purpose. The RCEP has enabled China to further improve its trade potential and gain greater market access in the region. According to the General Administration of Customs of China, the country's trade with RCEP member countries increased by 6.9% year-on-year to about $448.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022. Sources said that RCEP could also help Pakistan to remove trade and investment restrictions and make it easier to get goods, services, and investment from the world’s fastest-growing countries and put the country on the track of development. Strong trade ties with RCEP countries and the potential for investment, would also help Pakistan to multiply the benefits of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pakistan has welcomed the development partners and enterprises from around the world to increase investment and strengthen trade linkages with it by exploring the opportunities in special economic zones set up under CPEC. Sources told WealthPK Pakistan would cement its economic ties with the fast-growing countries of the Asia Pacific region to resuscitate its economy and sustain prosperity.