MANAMA: The landmark trade treaty between Bahrain and USA will not expire automatically unless one or both parties want to revoke it, according to a US Embassy official.
“The perception that the FTA gets expired automatically after certain period of time is not correct unless one of the parties wants to terminate it,” Timothy J Pound, Deputy Head of Mission at the US Embassy in Manama, said on Tuesday.
The US-Bahrain Foreign Trade Agreement (FTA) entered into force on 11 January, 2006. On the first day the agreement took effect, 100 percent of two-way trade in industrial and consumer products began to flow without tariffs. Between 200, the last year before the FTA, and 2012, the two-way Bahrain-US trade had been doubled.
The United States has only 14 FTAs across the world including four of them in the Arab world.
“From negotiations to signing its takes enormous efforts to conclude the treaty and you don’t negotiate any deal to revoke it later. The FTA lasts as long as both parties wants to keep it,” he clarified.