APEC: Essence is what counts, not form

APEC: Essence is what counts, not form

Pana Javiroj, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok

Thailand is to host next year's informal leaders' summit of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). And the Thaksin government has already swung into action. Government House will be hit with a 200 million baht facelift to achieve "international grandeur".

Apinan Pavanarit, deputy permanent secretary for foreign affairs, has gone over to Government House as one of the prime minister's assistants, taking up APEC issues on a full time basis.

Phuket, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, Pattaya and Bangkok have been chosen to host a series of APEC meetings leading up to the informal leaders' summit which usually takes place in November.

APEC currently has 21 members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Republic of the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

The 2003 APEC will focus on cooperation among the member countries on the following topics: Industrial science and technology, electronic commerce, development of knowledge-based economies, the WTO Millennium Round, human resources development, financial crisis/structural reform/social safety nets, sustainable development and genetically modified organisms (GMO).

Over the 13 years since APEC was founded, issues have become more sectoral based and rolling out these specific items of cooperation has became its preoccupation. Some international trade experts say this has cost the region an opportunity to take up more meaningful challenges.

"In later years, APEC has become a forum showing how national shirts or dresses look on international leaders," said one.

Cynicism aside, they suggest that the vision and the work of APEC should be subject to a rigorous review at the Bangkok summit. They point to the progress accomplished in earlier years where APEC member countries made great strides in cutting tariffs, although it was non-binding. The move spurred the European Union into paying greater attention to Asia.

APEC also played a decisive role in successfully pushing for new global trade at the World Trade Organization's meeting in Doha.

The United States also skillfully used APEC to push for a series of tariff reductions on information technology equipment -- prior to the global Internet takeoff.

The annual meetings of APEC finance ministers have also propelled countries in Asia to cooperate on foreign exchange.

But the vision set by the previous Eminent Persons Group, which was made up of respected international economists -- Thailand being represented by Dr. Narongchai Akrasenee -- is far from being realized.

The EPM then recommended that APEC should take off as a free trade community. The recommendation was very much a forefather of today's popular regional or bilateral free trade arrangement (FTA), and was taken up by East Asia's Vision Group.

In these later years, APEC seems to have lost its way, and the issues of the day often come to overshadow its mission in international economics.

APEC has become a creature of international power politics, and issues taken up are selected less on their priorities than whether they can win consensus by the member countries to proceed en masse.

But supporters of APEC say the main vision of the bloc is still on track although it has been slow in coming. The establishment of the Bogor goals for free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific (non-binding) by the years 2010 and 2020 is arguably APEC's most significant achievement -- when the time comes.

But now the world is awash with many FTA proposals of which the largest are the proposed Free Trade Arrangement of the Americas, the struggle for a new global trade round as the successor to the WTO, and the Thai government's own Asia Cooperation Dialog (ACD).

In the end, it will be the essence and not the form of the Bangkok APEC leaders' summit that will be remembered, and certainly not how the leaders look on the catwalk photo session.