APEC summit urged to take bolder steps

APEC summit urged to take bolder steps

By Vincent Lingga

SANTIAGO, Chile (JP): The Pacific Economic Cooperation Council
(PECC) has urged the 18 economies grouped in APEC to take bolder
steps to provide the private sector with greater certainty.

PECC said in a statement issued at the end of its 12th General
Meeting here Thursday that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum should maintain a high level of credibility through
concerted unilateral measures toward liberalization.

PECC, set up in 1980, is an informal tripartite organization
of officials, business and academia from 22 economies which works
to develop regional economic cooperation.

APEC, established in 1989, is a formal cooperation forum of 18
economies, which set out in Bogor, Indonesia, in 1994 its
ambitious goal of free and open trade and investment in 2010 for
the developed members and 2020 for the developing ones.

"We in PECC think it is imperative to show that the APEC
process can improve on its Manila Action Plans," noted Jusuf
Wanandi, chief of Indonesia's delegation to the PECC meeting.

This, according to Jusuf, who is also Chairman of the Centre
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, is one
of PECC's expectations of the fifth summit meeting of APEC in
Vancouver, Canada, next month.

The Manila Action Plans, adopted by APEC leaders at their
summit in the Philippines, last November, consists of collective
and individual action plans to achieve the APEC goal.

Jusuf quoted the findings of an assessment study by PECC on
the APEC action plans which show that progress has been made in
market opening for trade in goods.

"But many members expressed individual action plans in vague
terms, notably with regard to nontariff barriers," Jusuf added.

PECC suggested that APEC members make their action plans more
transparent and user-friendly so that economic players can react
in a timely way to policy changes.

"We also found that economic and technical cooperation, one of
the three pillars of APEC, has been the slowest to develop, while
this is the area which can quickly and greatly benefit the
developing members of APEC," he added.

PECC reaffirmed economic and technical cooperation as APEC's
critical and essential third pillar that should be given higher
priority.

The other two pillars or main policy spheres through which the
APEC goal is to be achieved are trade and investment
liberalization and trade and investment facilitation.

PECC also referred in its Santiago statement to the recent
currency crisis in Southeast Asia and urged cooperation to reach
global agreement on financial services to stabilize the
international financial system.

"The World Trade Organization's concern over financial
services therefore deserves active support and debate by APEC
members," PECC stated.

Transpacific partnership, besides Asia-Pacific cooperation in
general, was highlighted during the plenary sessions and various
seminars held during the three-day meeting.

About 600 businesspeople, academicians and officials of PECC's
22 member economies, assessed the potential of broader economic
ties between Latin America and East Asia.

PECC urged businesses, governments and academia to take up
the challenge of developing a stronger transpacific partnership
to generate benefits of greater cooperation and market-led
integration.

Attention to East Asian-Latin American economic partnership
was highlighted by the presence of Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Chile's President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and several ministers
from Asian and Latin American countries.

"One could not afford to relegate to a secondary role a region
that has the most dynamic economies and highest growth in the
world," Cardoso said referring to the essential need for closer
Latin American-Asian partnership.

Jusuf noted at one of the seminars on transpacific partnership
that Latin America and East Asia seem to be half a world apart.

"But this distance is no longer a barrier in view of the
economic globalization process and the fact that both regions
have been pursuing trade liberalization," Jusuf added.

According to the Inter American Development Bank, trade
between Latin America and Asia, though still small in proportion
to each region's total trade, has been growing steadily.

Latin American exports to Asia accounted for only about 10
percent of its total exports of US$240 billion and its imports
from Asia for 16.8 percent of its total imports of more than $250
billion in 1996.