Macau to lose EU trade benefits

Macau has been removed from the list of countries and territories entitled to reduced- or zero-import tariff rates for the European market, under the European Union’s import preference scheme – known as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) – for developing countries most in need. The new system will take effect from 2014. Early this month, the bloc issued a revised list of countries and territories entitled to receive benefits to the European market, featuring fewer beneficiaries, Portuguese newspaper Jornal Tribuna de Macau reports today. Macau was removed because the city has been listed for the last three years by the World Bank as a “high income” economy, our sister publication Business Daily previously reported. More than 80 countries and territories will no longer benefit from the GSP scheme starting 2014. The value of Macau’s exports to the European Union has fallen by 90.4 percent in the last five years. In the first nine months of this year, it accounted for less than 4 percent of all the city’s exports.