ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand signed the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Agreement (AANZFTA) in 2009. The Agreement entered into force in January 2010. It has been the crux of ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand economic relations over the past decade. The AANZFTA also has a specially-designed economic and technical cooperation program, namely AANZFTA Economic Cooperation Support Program (AECSP). It has delivered tangible outcomes in capacity building, institutional cooperation and support for the AANZFTA built-in agenda.

On 26 August 2014, Economic Ministers from ASEAN and ANZ signed the First Protocol to amend the AANZFTA. The Protocol does not change any of the preferences under the Agreement but introduces new procedures to ensure that administrative revisions are expedited in an efficient manner, removes some unnecessary information requirements, and streamlines the presentation of the product specific rules of origin to make the Agreement more user-friendly for businesses.

More recently, on 21 August 2023, the ASEAN and ANZ signed the Second Protocol to Amend the AANZFTA to further modernise the agreement through enhancements of provisions and introduction of new chapters such as Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), Government Procurement, and Trade and Sustainable Development.

AANZFTA is the key platform to foster economic partnership, support technical capacity building and policy dialogue among the involved Parties. As the most comprehensive ASEAN’s FTA, the AANZFTA covers a broad spectrum of areas, with standalone chapters/ annexes which includes:

• Trade in goods;
• Rules of origin;
• Customs procedures;
• Standards, technical regulations, and conformity assessment procedures;
• Sanitary and phytosanitary measures;
• Trade in services;
• Financial services;
• Telecommunication services;
• Movement of natural persons;
• Electronic commerce
• Investment;
• Intellectual property
• Competition;
• Economic cooperation
• Government procurement
• Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs);
• Trade and sustainable development; and
• Dispute settlement.

On economic cooperation, the AANZFTA has a specially designed economic and technical programme, namely the AANZFTA Economic Cooperation Support Program (AECSP), which was established in 2010 and contributed to enhancing the capacity of ASEAN Member States’ institution in implementing the AANZFTA and support for the AANZFTA built-in agenda. The succeeding economic cooperation programme namely the AANZFTA Implementation Support (AIS) Programme established in 2022, which is being delivered through the Regional Trade for Development (RT4D) Initiative.