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Kota Kinabalu: The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, if signed with China, Japan and South Korea in the group, could contribute to the post-pandemic recovery in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or Asean in which Sabah is part of the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines–East Asean Growth Area or BIMP-EAGA, with China’s economic growth in the recent quarter being a “convincing reassurance.”RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement in Asia Pacific between the ten member states of Asean and five of its FTA partners–Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. India which is Asean’s FTA partner, opted out of RCEP in November 2019.

For more than three decades, the BIMP-EAGA Sabah sector under alternate public and private sector leadership fell short of its developmental potential and it’s hoped that with RCEP, new impetus could materialise since many construction sites in Sabah are now handled by China companies for the developers.