The ministers have agreed on retaining the core contents of TPP but allowing the member countries to suspend some issues to "guarantee the mutual benefits in accordance with capability of each member country."
Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said that the ministers issued a joint statement which includes an additional appendix consisting of seven articles on the technical aspects of the new agreement and an annex listing points which are suspended and need further discussion.
The new agreement will suspend 20 articles of the original TPP agreement, including 10 articles related to intellectual property. In addition, 4 points will be separated for further negotiation and consensus.
Based on this statement, the ministers assigned heads of the negotiation groups to continue to solve a number of technical issues that were not consensual and to conduct legal reviews for the preparation of the signing.
The achieved results show the great efforts of the 11 TPP countries in order to promote economic growth, create jobs, improve people's livelihoods, facilitate trade development and strengthen economic cooperation among countries in the region.
Earlier, the existence of the TPP-11 raised doubt as some officials said Vietnam had stepped out one of the negotiation rounds, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not even attend the high-level officials’ meeting held among TPP countries later.
