APEC upbeat on trade deadline

APEC upbeat on trade deadline

SINGAPORE (Reuter): A senior Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) official said yesterday the group would meet its 1997 deadline for beginning the move to free trade among its 18 members, even though much remained to be done.

APEC executive director Armando Madamba said a summit of the group's leaders to be held in the Philippines in November was likely to endorse a plan on how to implement the free trade pact.

"I don't see really any kind of discontinuity. As a matter of fact, what you can see here is really a vision being translated into reality in 1997," he told Reuters in an interview.

He ruled out last-minute surprises in Manila, but stressed a lot still had to be done before the meeting.

"The Osaka Action Agenda sets out certain goals for all the member economies to try to achieve and to try to put the Osaka agenda into a more specific action plan," said Madamba, a former senior Philippine military officer.

"So in that respect, the fact that there has been a general agreement on that Action Agenda, I don't know where surprises will come out from.

"I think the greater concern is the question of time and concern to put this action plan together because there is really a lot of work now to be done," he said.

The group adopted an Action Agenda at meetings in Osaka, Japan last November which identified nine principles as the basis for trade liberalization "to achieve the long-term goal of free and open trade and investment" by 2010 for industrialized APEC economies and 2020 for its developing economies.

Members also agreed to take more than 100 steps in 15 trade areas before the Philippines summit.

APEC groups 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.

Madamba said the Manila gathering would be a climax of a four- year effort to translate a free-trade vision for one of the world's largest trading groups into a reality.

"There is a momentum, the continuity that you can sense, from the first time the leaders met in Blake's Island (in the United States), what they have done in Bogor (Indonesia), in Osaka and now in 1996," he said.

"We will see a lot of motion, a lot of projects getting implemented after the Manila summit...these action plans are supposed to be really getting into implementation phase beginning 1997," he added.

There are skeptics within the grouping, principally Malaysia, but Madamba did not appear to be worried.

"APEC, as a forum, has been very transparent. Whatever you see is what you get. Ultimately, I think the proof of APEC is what it achieves," he said.

Madamba, who is based in Singapore, also said APEC ministers would discuss this year whether to end a three-year moratorium on membership imposed in 1993.

Several countries such as Sri Lanka and India have applied to join.