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Algeria, EU agree to postpone tariff dismantling to 2020

23 August 2012 21:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Algeria and the European Union (EU) have agreed to review the tariff dismantling timetable of the Association Agreement singed between the two parties in 2002 and may postpone it to 2020, the official APS reported Thursday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

APS quoted a statement of the Foreign Ministry as saying that " After more than two years of negotiations, Algeria and the EU have come to an agreement to review the timetable of the tariff dismantling of the Association Agreement."

The new timetable suggests postponing to 2020 the lift of tariff barriers for a large range of industrial products imported by the North African nation from the euro zone, the source specified.

Several rounds of talks have been held in Brussels and Algiers on tariff dismantling in the frame of the Association Agreement between Algeria and the EU, which suggests a gradual dismantling of two lists of EU products to be imported by Algeria.

Algeria has finally convinced the EU to exempt from tariff dismantling a list of industrial products, in the domains of steel, textile, electronics and automobiles, to provide enough time for Algerian companies to get ready for competition with European firms.

The EU-Algeria Association Agreement was signed in 2002 and went into force on Sept. 1, 2005.

The EU is a main trading partner of Algeria, with a market share of over 52 percent.

Algeria’s imports from the EU increased from 8.2 billion U.S. dollars on annual average before the implementation of the Association Agreement (2002 to 2004) to 24.21 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, while its exports to the EU grew from an annual average of 15 billion U.S. dollars between 2002 and 2004 to 36.3 billion U. S. dollars in 2011, according to Algerian Ministry of Commerce.