Cecil Leong has many years of experience dealing with customs, international trade and investment issues in Asia. He has assisted both multinational corporations, as well as local companies in rationalizing their manufacturing and production capabilities in Southeast Asia and has successfully assisted in the application of investment and trade incentives. Examples of such are the various tax and import duty incentives offered by the governments in ASEAN, as well as regional incentives such as the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme, the ASEAN Industrial Cooperation (AICO) Scheme and the ASEAN Industrial Joint Venture (AIJV) Scheme, which are offered by ASEAN.

In the Customs field, Mr. Leong’s area of specialization includes the valuation of goods, cost-savings through "unbundling", the assessment of exposure and other customs compliance issues. Mr. Leong’s major clients include companies in the automotive, food processing, industrial chemicals and alcohol industries.

Mr. Leong began his professional career as a Senior Trade Officer with the Singapore Trade Development Board (TDB) in the 1990s and was the primary desk officer in-charge of Singapore’s negotiations within ASEAN on the various aspects of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). His secondary portfolio was to devise various strategies for the conduct of bilateral economic affairs with the United States and Canada, as well as General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Representative Experience

• Assisted the Government of Vietnam in reviewing the implementation phase of the Automobile Masterplan
• Represented a British company in the steel industry in minimizing its customs duty exposure in Guangdong province, China
• Analyzed the possibility for a Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer to export mobile phones from China to Taiwan
• Explored indirect tax strategies for a French alcohol company for its business in China
• Represented a British tobacco company in minimizing its customs and excise duty exposure into Thailand with the use of WTO customs valuation methodologies
• Analyzed the opportunities and risk with the Free Trade Agreements negotiated by Southeast Asian countries, particularly the ASEAN-China FTA, for a Japanese automobile manufacturer
• Represented a Swiss industrial machinery manufacturer to mitigate its customs duty exposure in Suzhou, China
• Represented a distributor of Japanese automobiles in Singapore in negotiations that will affect customs duty exposure with its principal
• Assisted a German automobile manufacturer with wholesale operations in Singapore in transfer price planning and justification with Singapore Customs
• Researched tariff classification of more than 10 products for a Japanese consumer electronics company for its exports into ASEAN, South Korea and Taiwan

Languages

• Chinese (Hokkien)
• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Chinese (Teochew)
• English