APEC stresses relevance amid doubts

APEC stresses relevance amid doubts

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (Reuters): Caught off-guard by a backlash against globalization, the Asia-Pacific's top regional grouping is trying to rebrand itself as a friend of the poor and downplay its role as a champion of free trade.

Officials of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, in Brunei for their leaders' annual summit (this) week, say the institution must throw off its image as a tool of big business if it is to survive.

They say growing doubts about the merits of globalization -- the creation of a single world marketplace without tariffs or other barriers to business -- threaten to put APEC seriously out of step with many of its people.

So the grouping is playing up its role as a vehicle for development and stressing the impact its program of education, training and technical cooperation is having on the poor and dispossessed in developing countries.

"APEC is not really about committees, conventions or trade summits, it is about making a real difference to real people's lives," Thailand's Economic Affairs Department Director-General Kobsak Chutikul told a news conference on Saturday.

"The ultimate objective must be development -- making people's lives better in all sections of our societies."

Established in 1989 as a forum to promote business and trade across the Pacific Rim, APEC has always had what its officials call "three pillars" as its core objective.

It aims to speed up trade and investment liberalization, help businesses take advantage of this liberalization by improving communications and trading links and it promotes economic and technical cooperation -- "Ecotech" in APEC jargon.

Almost all attention has focused on the first of these aims -- the promotion of free trade through globalization -- due to the enormous size of the APEC region.

APEC encompasses two-thirds of the world's population, 60 percent of world output and almost half the planet's trade.

The forum has also been used by the United States and other developed countries as the main tool to advance the cause of globalization and open developing markets to their products.

"APEC is the single most important regional institution in the Asia-Pacific," a senior U.S. official told Reuters.

APEC has adopted the goal of opening trade and investment in its developed economies by 2010 and developing nations by 2020.

The APEC talks in Auckland in September 1999 were the final springboard for preparations for the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in December with much time devoted to detailed preparations of an Asia-Pacific agenda for a new trade round.

But suddenly the climate changed.

Seattle erupted in a torrent of protests against free trade with demonstrators challenging the right of developed nations to force open, as they saw it, the markets of poorer nations.

Since the WTO talks collapsed and a new round of global trade talks was put on hold, opposition to globalization has become more fashionable. Within APEC, arguments against free trade that were previously suppressed have emerged.

Malaysia, always reluctant to open some of its own markets and suspicious of the motives of the United States, has openly questioned the benefits of an early new round.

"I have very serious doubts about anything shaping out of Brunei, because there is not yet any sign of a credible agenda that is of interest to both developed and developing countries," Malaysian International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

Although APEC leaders are almost certain to pledge support for a new round of global trade talks in their final communique on Nov. 16, much of the emphasis will be on other areas and will stress the value of the grouping's work in human terms.

The grouping will remain committed to free trade, but argue that it sees this as a means to an end: improving access to goods and services and opportunities for its people.

In a glossy booklet distributed in Brunei this week, APEC announces 300 Ecotech projects across the region tackling social and environmental problems in many of its poorest members states.

They include support for women's issues, education centers, workshops to train civil servants, cooperatives to help finance agricultural projects, conservation and environmental projects. Peru's ambassador to APEC, Elard Escala, says APEC has not changed, but it is adjusting its emphasis to put more stress on the impact it can have on the citizens of the Pacific Rim.

"We believe this 'third pillar' is absolutely crucial," he said. "Without this we believe we cannot reduce the disparities between the developing and the developed world."

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. (Chris Johnson)