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.