Fta Advantages

FTA What is FTA?

FTA is a type of regional trade agreements between countries. FTA violates MFN (most favored nation) principle of multilateral trading system and allows an exclusive favor to their member countries. However, as long as they follow requirements, the WTO regulations accept this type of discrimination. They require that no specific trade sector shall be excluded and tariffs and other restrictions shall be lifted principally within 10 years. Also, Tariffs and other restrictions for non-members shall be the same or diminished than those made before agreement. (KOIMA, 2013)

FTA reflects distinct characteristics depending on the involved countries. For example, an FTA made between a developed country and a developing country focuses

The reason of the expansion of the regional trade agreements is that FTA reacts to the changes of world economy fast and serves as an important component of trade strategy to achieve significant economic growth.

It is very important to examine the benefits that FTAs give to countries because it offers clues why Korea proactively forges FTAs. Benefits of FTA

FTA opens up new areas to competition and innovation by contributing to improvement of productivity. It provides better jobs, offers investment opportunities and help inducement of foreign investment. Since keeping their agreements I the base for international trade among traders, FTA create more stable environments for countries and companies to trust each other.

Now, each factor of benefits will be explored in depth.

Benefit 1: Increased Production

According to the Heritage Foundation, free trade fosters competition, spurring companies to innovate and develop better products while prices are kept low and quality remains high. Free trade allows countries and companies to focus on the goods or services that they do best. This can increase a company’s market share which results in a lower cost and increased productivity. As a result, production rates

And these laws have been amended in order to introduce the patent linkage system in granting market approval for generic drug applications. Especially, the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act and relevant regulations have been amended and entered into force on March 15, 2002. These laws were to provide on matters related to the registration and publication of the list of approved drugs and the notification of applications for marketing approval to the patent owner. In accordance with the revised Act (Act no. 11118), patented pharmaceutical products should be registered on the list of approved pharmaceutical products upon meeting the required criteria. The contents must be made available in public and the patent owner of the original pharmaceutical product should be notified with the applications for marketing approval for generic pharmaceutical products based on the information on the safety and efficacy of the listed pharmaceutical products. Moreover, the revised Ministerial Regulation limits the scope of patents of the listed pharmaceutical products to substances, dosage, composition or uses in order to prevent undue extension of data exclusivity for the original patented