APEC expected to lead global trade liberalization

By Vincent Lingga

BEIJING (JP): Asia-Pacific businesspeople, scholars and officials associated with the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) asked their governments yesterday to lead global trade liberalization.

It is most imperative for the leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to adopt ambitious, but realistic, action plans for trade and investment liberalization in the region, PECC asserted in a statement issued at the end of its three-day 11th General Meeting here yesterday.

The PECC, a non-governmental organization which was set up in 1980 to promote cooperation in the Pacific Rim, issued the Beijing Statement to supplement the recommendations it submitted to APEC senior officials in Sapporo, Japan, in July.

"By taking unilateral actions to accelerate trade liberalization beyond the requirements of the World Trade Organization (Uruguay Round commitments) APEC will be in a stronger position to take the lead in the global dismantling of obstacles to trade and investment," the statement said.

The PECC considers it crucial for the forthcoming APEC summit in Osaka to adopt an action agenda for concerted unilateral trade liberalization in order to maintain the momentum of the six-year APEC cooperation process.

The organization, however, cautioned that APEC should continue to uphold the guiding principles of open regionalism, equality and evolution.

It noted that APEC could learn much from economic cooperation experiences elsewhere, but the concepts cannot be simply transplanted into the dynamic and diverse Asia-Pacific.

"We want APEC to be a new model of regional integration, quite different from the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement," PECC said in the Beijing Statement entitled Open regionalism for global prosperity.

The Asia-Pacific model of regional cooperation will show that it is possible to strike a harmonious balance among the objectives of strengthening an open multilateral trading system, regional trade liberalization, facilitation and development cooperation, the statement noted.

PECC reaffirmed its suggestion that the action plans of APEC governments need to go well beyond the elimination of tariffs and quotas. They must also address obstacles to international trade and investment arising from differences in domestic policies and regulatory systems or product standards, as well as lack of transparency.

The dangers of the insidious growth of non-tariff barriers to trade and investment was pinpointed by Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Communications Goh Chee Wee who addressed the PECC morning session yesterday.

Goh cited high technical standards on imports, anti-dumping measures, labor standards and domestic policies, such as government procurement practices, as some of the new barriers being encountered in international trade.

"Worse still, some countries have resorted to bilateral measures against multilateral norms and mechanisms," Goh said, cautioning that such actions may give others the impression that there are two sets of rules, one for the big players and another more onerous one for everyone else.

Goh called on APEC to act quickly and decisively to implement comprehensive trade liberalization and facilitation as a model for the outside world.

Jusuf Wanandi, chief of the Indonesian delegation to the PECC meeting, concurred that a positive example would enable APEC to initiate a new round of multilateral trade negotiations at the inaugural ministerial meeting of the WTO in Singapore in December, 1996.

The PECC also sees further strengthening of APEC's non-binding investment principles as vital for allowing Asia-Pacific governments to take the lead in devising multilateral principles to promote international investments.

APEC, launched in Canberra in November 1989, groups 18 economies which together have a combined gross national product of about US$13.5 trillion. It accounts for 46 percent of the world's trade and 56 percent of the world's output.

The PECC represents 22 member economies, of which Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia. Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and the United States are also members of APEC.

Peru, Vietnam, Russia and the South Pacific Forum are the other four members of the PECC.

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