BERNE: Switzerland and China could sign a landmark free-trade agreement as early as July, the Alpine country said yesterday, as Beijing seeks to underscore its growing global ties via deals with European partners.
With China’s Premier Li Keqiang in Switzerland for high-level talks, the Swiss news agency ATS quoted Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann as saying he aimed to ink the deal during a visit to Beijing in July.
“China is our top commercial partner in Asia,” Schneider-Ammann underlined, during talks with Li and members of Switzerland’s financial sector, a driving force of its economy.
Li lauded Switzerland as a “global financial center” and said Beijing aimed to draw lessons from a formal dialogue. China is reforming its financial sector, notably concerning interest rates and trading in its currency, the yuan.
As Beijing ponders allowing selected offshore centers to trade in yuan, the Swiss National Bank’s chief Thomas Jordan said Switzerland hoped to do so.
Li arrived in Switzerland late Thursday on the first stop of his debut visit to Europe since taking the helm in March in Beijing’s once-in-a-decade power transfer.
Today he heads to Germany, China’s main European trade partner.
Unlike Germany, Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, and Li’s visit comes a month after China signed a free trade deal with Iceland, which likewise stands outside the 27-nation EU bloc.
The Iceland deal was China’s first with a European country, and Beijing has been pressing the EU for a similar accord.
Efforts to strike an overarching deal with the EU are more complicated because Beijing would need to find agreement with the entire bloc.
On Thursday, EU officials said that they aimed to negotiate an investment protection agreement with China, which would be the first step on the road to a wider free trade deal, despite a series of tit-for-tat disputes with Beijing.
