APEC to seek private funding for infrastructure

APEC to seek private funding for infrastructure

CEBU, Philippines (Agencies): Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) are pushing for more private sector investment in infrastructure in the region, participants at the forum's four-day senior officials' meeting here said yesterday.

"There's still a feeling that the actual level of private sector participation is less than what is desirable and less than what government is hoping for," World Bank senior adviser for East Asia and the Pacific, Harinder Kohli, also a member of APEC's infrastructure workshop, said in a statement.

The problems blocking private sector investment in the region's infrastructure projects were lack of clear government objectives, slow government decision-making, lack of a proper legal and regulatory framework and inadequate capital markets, he said.

Kohli said a possible solution mulled by forum members was the sharing of investment risks.

"The commercial risk can be taken by the private sector and the sovereign risk related to government policy and regulation can be taken by the public sector," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Deputy trade and foreign ministers of APEC are meeting in the central Philippine city of Cebu to draw up action plans to liberalize trade and investments in the region.

The forum, potentially the world's biggest, wealthiest and most diverse regional trade grouping comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

At yesterday's meeting, the senior officials meeting also named a high-powered group of business executives to advise the group on trade and investment issues.

AFP reported that the APEC Business Advisory Council includes Salomon Brothers chief executive Robert Denham, Frank Boman of Boeing Corp., Lee Hsien Yang, president of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., and Bae Soon Hoon, chief executive of South Korea's Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd.

Other members named earlier this month include Gordon Wu of Hong Kong's Hopewell Holdings Ltd., Jeffrey Ko, chairman of Taiwan's China Trust Commercial Bank, Yao Jinrong, executive director of China International Trust and Investment Corp. and Minoru Murofushi, president of Japan's Itochu Corp.

The council is an initiative of an APEC summit Osaka in 1995. It replaced the Pacific Business Forum initiated in APEC's inaugural summit in Seattle in 1993.

The advisory group will hold its first meeting from June 14 to 16 in Manila, during which members will identify the private sector's concerns to be presented in a dialogue with world leaders during an APEC summit to be hosted by the Philippines on Nov. 25.

The four-day senior officials meeting here that ends Saturday is the second of four such conferences ahead of the Nov. 25 summit.

Antonio Basilio, the deputy chairman of the senior officials' meeting, said the business council has been "given the mandate to relay the view of the private sector" to leaders of APEC's 18 member economies.