Twelfth session of the standing committee of the National People's Congress meeting 3, 22 examined and approved the law of the People's Republic of China's accession to the world trade organization (wto) tariff schedules of amendment. Therefore, our country will begin in the near future to 201 items imported from the world trade organization members gradually reduce and ultimately remove tariffs information technology products.
These products include information and communications products, semiconductor and its production equipment, audio-visual products, medical equipment, instruments and meters, etc., most of these products import tariffs will be zero by 3 years or 5 years, a small amount of product import tariffs will be zero by seven years. In the process of deliberation, Lou jiwei, director of the state council tariff commission, the Treasury secretary, the amendments to illustrate the basic situation and the main content.
According to the nine session of the 17th meeting of the NPC standing committee's decision, in 2001 China signed the law of the People's Republic of China to join protocol. The protocol is a major legal documents of China's accession to the wto, tariff schedules is one of the important accessories. This bill is for the first time since China's accession to the wto tariff schedules, is also the first time the standing committee of the National People's Congress examined and tariff concession amendment. The meeting through the bill shows that our country supports the world multilateral trade regime consistent position.
And approved the amendment, will be conducive to the parties to implement the world trade organization (wto) framework for expanding the scope of the information technology agreement negotiation results. In our country in 2012 to join the talks. After the hard negotiations, on December 16, 2015, 24 participants, including China, jointly issued on the expansion of information technology products trade minister declaration, clear at will, after fulfilling the domestic approval in accordance with the principle of the most-favoured-nation treatment, to the world trade organization members to phase out the import tariff of 201 information technology products. This is one of the world trade organization in nearly 20 years of the first major achievements of tariff concession, covered by the product of the global trade volume of about $1.3 trillion a year, the results of a smooth implementation will strongly promote global trade, investment, and the development of information technology, made great contribution to global economic growth.
The above products in China trade accounts for about a quarter of the global trade volume of similar products, the first in the world. All the participants to implement lower taxes, will be conducive to promote information technology products export in our country, and is conducive to the use of information technology in our country product enterprises to reduce costs, improve production efficiency, high-end towards industry. Lower tariffs in China objectively will also pressure and challenge on relevant domestic industries, requires enterprises to actively respond to and speed up the transformation and upgrading, mass transfer efficiency, to meet the challenge, innovation development to improve the core competitiveness and sustainable development ability.
