May 26 (Reuters) - Mexico and Brazil will take steps this year to ease restrictions on bilateral trade and aim to double their shared commerce in less than 10 years, the leaders of Latin America's two biggest economies said on Tuesday.

During a visit to Mexico City, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said in a speech that talks would begin in July in an effort to increase the range of products included in a joint trade agreement known as ACE 53 from just over 800 to more than 6,000.

GENEVA:Peru lost its appeal on Monday in a trade dispute over its agricultural import levy, a case brought to the World Trade Organisation by sugar exporter Guatemala two years ago. 

Peru, one of the countries negotiating the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, imposes an extra import levy on sugar, rice, corn, and dairy products when international prices fall below a certain level, a system that Guatemala said was illegal under global trade rules. 

The controversial law with which the government intends to protect domestic agricultural production is currently being implemented and as a result, the government has suspended 3,275 permits belonging to companies that were not complying with the requirements under the new law, such as "... having adequate storage warehouses for food, having a legal representative and having legal residence. "

Nicaragua has become the eleventh WTO member to ratify the new Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). The newly appointed Nicaraguan ambassador to the WTO, Hernán Estrada Román, presented the instrument of acceptance of the TFA to the Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo on August 4th.

This has been excerpted from the 4 August 2015 edition of World Trade Organization and is available in its entirety at: https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news15_e/fac_04aug15_e.htm

Guatemala has become the first country to accede to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)-Central American Free Trade Agreement (FTA), through a protocol signed on June 22, 2015.

Ministers from Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Panama, and Guatemala have signed the Protocol of Accession. The FTA covers trade in goods and services, trade facilitation, rules of origin, competition, intellectual property, government procurement, and sustainable development. A Joint Committee oversees its functioning.

China and Chile have agreed to establish a working group by August that would consider how to upgrade the two nations' free trade agreement, China's Ministry of Commerce said.

The China-Chile FTA was signed in November 2005 and came into effect in October 2006. That agreement mainly covered trade in goods, but supplementary agreements on investment and trade in services were signed and implemented later.

The China-Chile FTA was the first FTA signed between China and a Latin American country, the Ministry said.

Chile and South Korea discussed plans to upgrade their bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) during a meeting on July 23, 2015.

The two sides used the meeting to define the steps to be taken to modernize the agreement, which has been in place for eleven years.

It was tentatively agreed at the meeting that the two countries will meet in November to hold further discussions on upgrading the agreement.

Argentina has lifted an embargo on imports of Brazilian beef, Brazil's agriculture minister, Katia Abreu, said on Wednesday, as the world's largest beef exporter seeks to enter new markets.

Abreu expects the United States to start importing fresh Brazilian beef by August and is working to open Japan's market. The minister said a Chinese delegation would arrive next week to consider approving nine more Brazilian beef plants for export. 

Another round of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership concluded recently in Maui, Hawaii Islands, USA. The 12 countries represented (Australia, Brunei, Chile, United States, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Mexico) decided to continue discussions on a bilateral basis with the firm intention of passing a number "limited" differences that have not yet been dispelled.

Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru initiated a new relationship in 2011 called the Pacific Alliance. The goal of the Pacific Alliance is to focus on developing the trade of services which currently represent 60% of all trade between these countries. The rest will be an exchange of manufacturing, which when combined with the services trade, will be over 70% of trade related to the tourism and food industries.