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The APTA member countries' decision, taken in the fourth round of negotiations to widen the coverage of concession to 10,593 tariff lines, came into effect on Sunday last.
Under the third round of negotiations of the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) grouping, 4,270 items had been enjoying tariff concessions.
Bangladesh, China, India, South Korea, Laos and Sri Lanka are members of the bloc.
The fourth round of negotiation concluded on January 13 last year. The decision taken in this round of negotiation was first set to come into effect in January.
However, some procedural backlogs delayed its implementation to this July.
With implementation of the new preferential tariff coverage, 602 Bangladeshi, 3,190 Indian, 2,372 Chinese, 2,797 South Korean, 633 Sri Lankan, and 999 Lao PDR products saw tariff cut.
Launched in October 2007, the fourth round of negotiations was scheduled to be concluded by the third ministerial council in October 2009.
But some policy-level disagreements between China and Korea and also between China and India delayed the process.
Officials said after the fourth-round negotiations were over in 2013, some of the member-countries, including the Republic of Korea and China, came up with fresh proposals and sought to hold talks again.
That held back the ministerial approval for outcome of the fourth-round negotiations.
Under the new coverage the products will enjoy tariff preference between 31.52 per cent and 81 per cent.
The APTA offers simple and common Rules of Origin (RoO) with the minimum local value addition required to be 45 per cent of the freight on board (FOB) value.
The least-developed country members of the bloc require 35 per cent value addition to enjoy the tariff preferences.
The fourth round of negotiations has widened the coverage of preferences for the total tariff lines for each member-state.
As one of the oldest preferential trade agreements between countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the APTA pact occupies a market for 2.921 billion people.
The size of APTA market accounted for US$14,616 billion in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) in fiscal year 2015-2016.
Its main objective is to hasten economic development among the six participating states opting for trade-and investment-liberalisation measures which will contribute to the intra-regional trade.