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."