The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) on Wednesday announced the formal enforcement of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement after all the member countries ratified the agreement on national levels.

Talking to Nepalnews on Friday, one of the directors of the SAARC secretariat informed that the announcement was made on March though the SAFTA agreement came into effect from Jan 1 2006, after all the member nations completed national procedures for the regional trading regime.

The agreement on SAFTA was signed in Islamabad during the 12th SAARC summit in January 2004, and all the member states have since completed all formalities including ratification, he added.

All the necessary procedures for implementation of SAFTA would be completed by Jan 1 2016.

The first round of customs duty reduction will take place as agreed by the member states in July/August 2006.

As per the SAFTA agreement, developing countries will bring down their customs tariff to 20 percent while Least Developed Countries (LDCs) countries will bring it down to 30 percent during the first phase between 2006-2008. Non-LDC nations will bring down tariff level to between 0 and 5 percent by 2009 while LDC nations will do so by 2016.