Ottawa – Building on the success of the Team Canada Trade Mission to Japan in fall 2023, Mary Ng, Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development, announced that she will lead Team Canada trade missions to Malaysia and Vietnam from March 24 to 29 and to South Korea from April 21 to 25, 2024. Details are as below:
- The Indo-Pacific is Canada’s second-largest regional export market, after the United States, with annual 2-way merchandise trade valued at $270 billion in 2022.
- Launched in November 2022, Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy creates opportunities to expand trade and investment, grow good jobs and build supply chain resilience.
- Malaysia is one of Canada’s largest bilateral merchandise trading partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. Bilateral trade between Canada and Malaysia increased by over 17% in 2022 compared to 2021.
- As of November 29, 2022, bilateral commercial exchanges between Malaysia and Canada are bolstered by the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
- Vietnam is the largest trading partner in the ASEAN region and the CPTPP has been in force in Vietnam since January 2019.
- Vietnam is an economic partner that plays an important role in advancing Canada’s trade diversification efforts in the region.
- Canada and South Korea enjoy close relations, strengthened by long-standing people-to-people ties, shared values, a history of mutual support, and Canada’s first and only bilateral free trade agreement in the Indo-Pacific region: the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
- South Korea was Canada’s seventh-largest trading partner by two-way merchandise trade and sixth-largest import and export partner.