UPSC Prelims 2016 · Question 2 of 98

UPSC Prelims 2016 question on RCEP ASEAN

The term 'Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership' often appears in the news in the context of the affairs of a group of countries known as

  1. G20
  2. ASEAN
  3. SCO
  4. SAARC
Show answer

Answer: B. ASEAN

Verdict

The answer is ASEAN. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is an ASEAN centred negotiation.

Analysis

RCEP was launched on the basis of a declaration by leaders at the ASEAN Summit of November 2012, with negotiations beginning in May 2013 between the ten ASEAN member states and their six free trade agreement partners, that is Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The negotiations covered trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property, economic and technical cooperation, competition, electronic commerce and legal and institutional issues. The G20 is a macroeconomic forum, the SCO is a Eurasian security and political grouping, and SAARC is a South Asian body with no such partnership.

Source

The Hindu report on warnings about the ASEAN trade agreement.

How to crack it

Read the word Regional in a trade agreement's name as a pointer to the geographic core, and then ask which of the offered groupings is actually a trade bloc capable of anchoring such a negotiation. The SCO and SAARC are not trade blocs of that kind and the G20 negotiates nothing binding. Keep the mega regional trade agreements of this period paired with their anchors, since RCEP goes with ASEAN and the Trans-Pacific Partnership goes with the Pacific rim twelve.

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