APEC faces choice: Reform or perish, analysts say<\/p>\n
Elisia Yeo, Agence France-Presse\/Busan, South Korea<\/p>\n
Long-haunted by accusations of irrelevance, the Asia Pacific
\nEconomic Cooperation (APEC) forum has reached a critical point
\nwhere it must reform or fade into history, analysts say.<\/p>\n
The 21 APEC members, countries or territories bordering the
\nPacific Ocean, are meeting here this week to see how far APEC's
\nfree trade agenda has come since the group's launch in 1989.<\/p>\n
The group's aim is to ensure free trade and investment among
\nmembers, but the agenda has become increasingly driven by other
\npressing global issues such as terrorism, security and public
\nhealth.<\/p>\n
The influential Australia-based Lowy Institute for
\nInternational Policy has released a report warning that APEC is
\n\"balanced on the brink of terminal irrelevance\".<\/p>\n
The report says APEC has become a bloated organization with
\ntoo many members. It says the group's goals are confused and that
\nits agenda, which includes 230 projects, is far too wide.<\/p>\n
\"While APEC is important to the international interests of
\nsome of its members, for others it is peripheral at best,\" said
\nthe report, issued ahead of this week's meetings in the South
\nKorean port city of Busan.<\/p>\n
\"And for many in the middle, APEC only really comes into focus
\nat the time of the annual summit.\"<\/p>\n
The report also said APEC was facing competition from other
\nregional groups including the newly-formed East Asia summit which
\nwill bring together East Asia, Southeast Asia, New Zealand,
\nAustralia and India for an inaugural meeting in Kuala Lumpur next
\nmonth.<\/p>\n
\"For many purposes China will prefer these East Asian forums
\nto APEC because they include neither (APEC members) the United
\nStates nor Taiwan,\" said the report.<\/p>\n
The key measure of APEC's progress lies in an agreement struck
\nin 1994 in Bogor, Indonesia, which has become the group's mission
\nstatement.<\/p>\n
The Bogor goals call for free and open trade and investment in
\nthe Asia-Pacific region for developed economies by 2010 and for
\ndeveloping economies by 2020.<\/p>\n
But APEC commitments are non-binding and critics say the Bogor
\ngoals have fallen by the wayside and been replaced by an
\navalanche of bilateral and regional free trade agreements.<\/p>\n
The private-sector APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC),
\nwhich advises the organization, has demanded reform and a focused
\nreturn to regional trade liberalization.<\/p>\n
\"While we welcome the liberalization arising from these
\nagreements ... a proliferation of them can have perverse effects
\nof creating distortions and increasing the cost of doing
\nbusiness,\" ABAC said in an open letter to APEC's current
\nchairman, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.<\/p>\n
However APEC officials insist the group is still on track.<\/p>\n
APEC secretariat executive director Choi Seok-young said when
\nthe group was conceived in 1989, average tariff levels among
\nmembers were 17.7 percent. By the end of 2004, the tariff average
\nwas 5.5 percent.<\/p>\n
\"APEC has contributed a lot to this process,\" Choi told AFP.
\n\"We believe that the Bogor goals are on track.\"<\/p>\n
Ironically, the current stalemate in the Doha round of World
\nTrade Organization (WTO) talks has put the issue of free trade
\nback at the top of APEC's agenda this week.<\/p>\n
APEC leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush, are to
\nissue a strong statement after talks on Saturday urging all
\ncountries involved in global trade talks to make concessions to
\nkeep the Doha round alive.<\/p>\n
This renewed emphasis on boosting multilateral trade, as well
\nthe narrowing of its agenda, figures in the Lowy Institute's
\nprescriptions for APEC's salvation.<\/p>\n
\"APEC's role in support of the multilateral system will be
\nparticularly important if the Doha round of WTO negotiations
\nfail,\" the report said.<\/p>\n
The business leaders have also called on APEC to help unblock
\nglobal trade talks as a way to achieving the group's free trade
\ngoals.<\/p>\n
\"It is our strongly held belief that nothing is more important
\nthan this,\" said the ABAC open letter.<\/p>",
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