A new Asia-Pacific free trade agreement set to enter into force on 1 January 2022 will create the world’s largest trading bloc by economic size, according to an UNCTAD study published on 15 December.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) includes 15 East Asian and Pacific nations of different economic sizes and stages of development. They are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. The RCEP will become the largest trade agreement in the world as measured by the GDP of its members – almost of one third of the world’s GDP.

By comparison, other major regional trade agreements by share of global GDP are the South American trade bloc Mercosur (2.4%), Africa’s continental free trade area (2.9%), the European Union (17.9%) and the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement (28%).