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Yokohama, Japan (AHN) – Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan pledged Tuesday to bring Japan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral free-trade agreement that Kan hopes will help restore the nation’s flagging economy.

The TPP aims to eliminate tariffs of member countries in 10 years. Currently, nine Asia-Pacific countries are members, including Singapore and New Zealand. The United States, Australia, China and three other countries are in talks to join the partnership.

Approval comes three days ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit to be held this week in Yokohama where formation of the TPP is expected to be discussed and where Kan will announce the new policy.

It remains to be seen whether Japan will be actually join the TPP and drastically open up its agricultural sector that relies on tariffs to protect it from a deluge of competitive and cheap foreign imports. Other than the business and industrial sector, it is Japan’s agricultural sector that is currently opposed to the new policy.

For this reason, Kan appointed four Cabinet ministers to form a new body tasked with creating measures to improve the competitiveness of Japan’s farm products, in preparation for Japan’s planned formal joining of the TPP by June of next year.

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