Leaders gathering for the Trans-Pacific Partnership summit are likely to announce their countries are "on track" to complete their work while noting "significant progress" in various fields of the free trade accord, their draft statement showed Monday.
At the same time, however, ministers from the 12 countries in the TPP negotiations acknowledged they had not yet come to an agreement on "treatment of the most sensitive products" in the field of tariff eliminations, the draft report obtained by Kyodo News said.
The ministerial report to their leaders, which is to be released at the TPP summit on Tuesday, says the negotiators will construct a "single tariff schedule and have common rules of origin." It says the ministers will stand ready to bring more countries into the TPP "following the completion of the initial agreement."