Seoul, March 10:

Free trade talks between South Korea and 10-member ASEAN have hit a snag over tariffs for sensitive items such as food and automobiles, officials here said on Friday.

The two sides held the 10th round of free trade agreement (FTA) talks in Jakarta from Monday to Friday, the officials of the Agriculture Ministry said.

“They differ over tariffs on their own sensitive items. For ASEAN, these items include key South Korean exports such as automobiles, steel and mobile handsets,” an official of the ministry told AFP.

“For us, sensitive items are mainly agricultural products such as tropical fruits, pork and chicken, and other high-tariff goods including chilly, garlic and onions,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

South Korea and ASEAN signed a deal in December to start phasing in a free-trade agreement (FTA) this year. Under the deal, South Korea and six ASEAN countries — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand — would start cutting tariffs from July, when the agreement goes into force.

The deal will come into effect with the other four ASEAN members — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam — at a later date.

The proposed accord specifies that South Korea and each ASEAN country may choose up to 40 items that could be excluded from tariff reductions for an unspecified period. South Korea wants to put rice on its protected list but Thailand, the world’s number-one rice exporter, initially objected.

Under a WTO-sponsored deal negotiated in 2004 with rice-exporting countries including Thailand, South Korea pledged to raise its rice import quota to 7.96 per cent of total domestic consumption from the current four per cent.

In return it won a 10-year grace period before it must open up fully to rice imports. The South Korean official claimed Thailand had accepted the WTO-sponsored deal over South Korea’s rice market during the regional FTA talks.

South Korea’s exports to ASEAN increased 14.2 per cent last year to 27.4 billion dollars as imports rose 16.4 per cent to 26 billion dollars, according to Seoul.