(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) Seoul September 17 (QNA) - South Korea and China will hold what they hope will be the last round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) next week the South Korean trade ministry said Wednesday. The talks slated from Monday through Friday in Beijing will be the fifth this year. The two countries had planned on four rounds of negotiations South Korea's News Agency (Yonhap) reported. The trade agreement talks got a hard push in July when South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on joint efforts to conclude the FTA within this year. Yoon Sang-jick South Korea's minister for trade industry and energy said next week's negotiations may be the last round although there could be some unofficial and in-between sessions before the formal conclusion of the talks. "Actually the Chinese side says it wants the FTA negotiations concluded before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Meeting" Yoon said earlier. The APEC summit involving both South Korean and Chinese heads of state is slated to be held in Beijing on Nov. 10-11. China's commerce ministry on Tuesday said it was "quite optimistic" about concluding the FTA by the end of this year citing "very good" progress in the drawn-out talks. The FTA talks began in May 2012. The two countries have already agreed to eliminate their import tariffs on 90% of products traded between them. The remaining obstacles are mostly on which products will be excluded from market opening. South Korea reportedly wishes to protect its agriculture market while China seeking to protect its manufacturing industry wants to exclude a number of industrial goods such as automobiles and industrial parts and materials from the list for market opening. China the world's single largest importer of South Korean products accounted for nearly 25% of South Korea's overall exports in 2013. (QNA)
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