We, the Ministers and Heads of Delegation for Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam have completed our three-day ministerial meeting to lay the groundwork for the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations.  Our meeting followed a week of officials’ level discussions in Canberra, from 19-24 October 2014.

We are pleased to report that, over the past weeks, we have made significant progress on both component parts of the TPP Agreement: the market access negotiations and negotiations on the trade and investment rules, which will define, shape and integrate the TPP region once the agreement comes into force.

Over the course of our weekend meeting, we have spent a considerable portion of our time in one-on-one discussions.  That has allowed us to make further progress in the negotiations on market access for goods, services and investment.  We met in a plenary format to make decisions on a range of issues that will help set the stage to bring the TPP negotiations to finalization.

We consider that the shape of an ambitious, comprehensive, high standard and balanced deal is crystallizing.  We will continue to focus our efforts, and those of our negotiating teams, to consult widely at home and work intensely with each other to resolve outstanding issues in order to provide significant economic and strategic benefits for each of us.

We now pass the baton back to Chief Negotiators to carry out instructions we have given.

We will continue to build on the progress we made at this meeting and will meet again in the coming weeks.