APEC wants free trade in 2020

APEC wants free trade in 2020

JAKARTA (JP): A special task force of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum yesterday handed President
Soeharto their report which calls for establishing an Asia-
Pacific free trade region by the year 2020.

C. Fred Bergsten, the chairman of APEC's Eminent Persons Group
(EPG), delivered the report which will serve as a proposed
guideline for the forum's future outlook.

"The President emphasized that the EPG report will be used as
a point of reference for the leaders," said Minister/State
Secretary Moerdiono following the meeting at Soeharto's residence
on Jl. Cendana, Central Jakarta.

Established during the 1992 APEC Ministerial Meeting in
Bangkok, the EPG was created to provide a working framework for
the forum's future.

It consists of 16 intellectuals and experts from APEC members,
of whom Indonesian and Japanese representatives, Suhadi
Mangkusuwondo and Ippei Yamazawa, respectively, were also present
at yesterday's meeting.

Despite acknowledging the President's shared view towards an
open and free trade region, Moerdiono quickly warned against
premature speculation on policies, since the matter would not be
decided until the Nov. 15 APEC Leaders Economic Meeting (ALEM) in
Bogor.

APEC groups the United States, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, South
Korea, China, Hong Kong, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand
and Canada along with the members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Brunei and Indonesia which currently chairs the
forum.

Free Trade

Bergsten also asserted that the forum must forefront a push to
liberate the global trading system.

"It is essential for APEC to take the lead to begin moving
forward the process of further reduction of barriers," noted
Bergsten, who is also the Director of the Washington-based
Institute for International Economics.

Indonesia's Suhadi Mangkusuwondo also stressed this necessity
when he said, "the main thrust of our report is for APEC leaders
and ministers to adopt a long term goal of free and open trade in
the region."

In a 42-page report released worldwide yesterday, the EPG
calls for comprehensive free and open trade by the year 2020.

The report outlines the initiative of a trade liberalization
program among members beginning in the year 2000 with a
completion deadline of 10 years for industrialized countries, 15
years for newly industrializing nations and 20 years for
developing ones such as Indonesia.

However, as stipulated in the report and reiterated by
Bergsten, the EPG seemed confident that if adopted, the
liberalization process would probably accelerate before the
designated target year.

Outward

Elaborating on APEC's regional free trade area, Bergsten
underlined that Asia-Pacific should not become a closed inward-
looking regional forum as is the tendency in many parts of the
world today.

"We want to counter that risk through the APEC forum
developing an outward-looking regionalism," he said.

Both Suhadi and Bergsten said that the current set of
proposals, entitled Achieving the APEC Vision, is a continuation
of the EPG's first report presented prior to the 1993 inaugural
ALEM on Blake Island, Seattle, the U.S., last November.

They said that the second report contained more concrete
guidelines for implementing the concepts presented in the Seattle
meeting.

Among the items highlighted in the report are trade and
investment facilitation, an APEC Dispute Mediation Service (DMS),
trade liberalization and technical cooperation.

"The Dispute Mediation Service is given high priority in this
year's report," said Japan's EPG representative Ippei Yamazawa.

The function of the DMS is designed to complement the rules
and procedures for the settlement of disputes to be implemented
by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Yamazawa explained that the DMS would channel bilateral
disputes in multilateral directions in cases which fall outside
the competence of the WTO.

When queried on the initial reactions of APEC governments
towards the newly published report, Bergsten remarked that it was
still too early to tell since it had only been distributed two
days earlier.

"We do not expect it to be accepted or rejected as a
whole...that would be expecting too much," he said. (mds)