APEC sets priorities at Singapore meeting

APEC sets priorities at Singapore meeting

SINGAPORE (AP): A government-business group working to develop
the express air delivery business in Asia-Pacific countries is a
model for other such efforts to open and build the region's
markets, a U.S. official said yesterday.

"The customs working group is a real example of what the rest
of APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations) could
do," U.S. APEC ambassador John Wolf told reporters after a two-
day meeting attended by only six senior officials in the 18-
nation association.

APEC's customs working group has pilot projects on express
mail service in the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia
"to demonstrate what modern practices are," Wolf said. The
customs group is a model because it includes private sector
companies in the planning stage and moves quickly toward concrete
changes.

"APEC is about opening markets and building markets," Wolf
said. He said he would have preferred that more senior officials
attended the inaugural meeting of a subcommittee on economic and
technological cooperation.

Only Malaysia, Indonesia, the United States, Canada and New
Zealand sent senior officials to the meeting chaired by Mexico's
APEC Ambassador Jorge Lozoya. Other countries - including
Singapore where the APEC secretariat is headquartered - sent
lower level officials.

Asia is behind the United States and Europe in electronic
commerce, a market that Wolf said the region needs to get ready
for quickly by changing laws and coordinating data transfer
systems.

"In electronic commerce, profits are going to go to the
swiftest," he said. Noting that in recent APEC meetings, some
officials refer to such business as something for the next
century, Wolf said, "The next century is 18 months away."

Earlier Lozoya announced that the subcommittee had agreed that
projects to develop human resources and also future technology
will be priorities for the next year.

Lozoya said, "We have to enhance the involvement of the
private sector in APEC activities all over the region. One of the
great hopes for the Pacific Basin is that we can put together a
systemic view by which expansion of the corporations and
advancement of societies can be (linked) in a more efficient
way."