A special parliamentary session to decide on Malaysia’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) has been set at end-January 2016.

International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed said it will involve a two-day sitting in Parliament and one day at the Senate.

“The date is fixed and it will be for Parliament to announce it,” he told reporters after launching the Young Entrepreneurs Congress 2015 today.

Mustapa said currently the government is actively engaging the public in TPPA awareness programme.

“It is important to create awareness on the TPPA at the grassroot level. This is my priority in January next year to ensure that the village leaders and the villagers understand it,” he said.

Currently, the ministry is actively engaging the academic community and professionals on the trade agreement, he said.

The TPPA negotiations, which were first launched in 2005, involved 12 countries - Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam.

The final TPPA document, together with two other cost-and-benefit analyses, were prepared by the Malaysian Institute of Strategic and International Studies and PricewaterhouseCoopers Malaysia and had been made public early December.

Meanwhile, the one-day congress, which involved three town hall sessions, discussed TPPA, the halal industry and financing. Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi closed the congress.

- Bernama