Andean Trade Featured at Material World
The Andean Community, a group of Andean countries touting the region’s duty-free trade status to the United States, will host an international pavilion March 17–19 at the Material World conference in Miami Beach, Fla.
At the Andean Community Pavilion in the Miami Beach Convention Center, 45 companies from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia will showcase their ability to produce apparel under the new Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Enforcement Act (ATPDEA).
The trade act allows duty-free status for almost all apparel goods created in member countries. It was enacted last November and will expire at the end of 2006.
The Andean Community will hold a breakfast networking presentation to discuss the advantages of ATPDEA and showcase apparel manufacturers. The breakfast will take place at 7:30 a.m. March 17 in room C126 of the convention center.
On March 18, the Andean Community will hold a business reception with the region’s leading manufacturers from 4 to 6 p.m. at the pavilion.
“For us the trade agreement is great,” said Fernando Albareda, Peru’s trade commissioner in Miami. “We don’t have to pay the duties we had to pay before.”
Peruvian manufacturers do mostly complete contracts, rather than partial contracts, for foreign companies, Albareda said.
“We are really good at golf shirts, polo shirts and T-shirts,” he noted.
The trade act signed by President George W. Bush is an expansion of a previous trade agreement that had expired at the end of 2001. The new trade agreement expands the number of products allowed to enter the United States duty-free from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia from 4,900 to 5,600.
Under the expanded ATPDEA, apparel assembled in the Andean region from U.S. fabric or knit-to-shape fabric components may enter duty-free in unlimited quantities.
Apparel assembled from Andean regional fabric, such as cotton or alpaca, or components that are knit to shape in the region may enter duty-free but are subject to a cap. The cap is set at 2 percent of total U.S. apparel imports and will increase annually in equal increments to 5 percent.
Currently, the Andean countries account for only about 1 percent of U.S. apparel imports.
The trade act is designed to encourage Andean countries to diversify their economic activities away from drug production.
During the previous trade act, Peru’s exports to the United States increased from 16 percent of the country’s exports in 1994 to 30 percent in 2001.
Bolivian officials said the new trade act will allow their country to export more jewelry and leather goods.
The Andean Community Pavilion is just one of the many international exhibitions that will be featured at Material World, which was launched in September 2000 and is now a semiannual event at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event features leading textile mills, distributors, converters, contractors and technology providers from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. —Deborah Belgum
