Asia, Americas urged to step up economic ties
Asia, Americas urged to step up economic ties
Bernice Han, Agence France-Presse, Bangkok
Asia and the Americas are competitors in the economic arena but there is much the two sides can do together to push for free trade and stimulate closer trading ties, Mexico's President Vicente Fox said Monday.
"America and Asia are confronting important challenges and opportunities to strengthen our trading and our investments," Fox told more than 400 top business executives at a forum of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit.
"We must strive to attract investors' attention so that each makes the most out of their competitive advantages," Fox said.
He also called on the two sides to strengthen trading relations through the "rapid lowering of trade barriers and duties".
"Although there are marked differences among the countries and economies of APEC, the developed and developing economies in this area still maintain relatively high levels of protection in their specific sectors," he said.
In his speech, Fox declared his country's goal to be the gateway for Asia into the America's region and vowed to adopt a pro-business policy to make Mexico an attractive place for Asian investors.
"The enormous border we share with the United States offers investors in Mexico an immediate access to the world's largest market and at the same time it grants access going south," he said.
"I invite you to consider us your allies and to explore jointly the enormous opportunities we offer as a continent."
In his speech, Fox highlighted the agricultural and food sectors as the key stumbling blocs to more free trade and urged for a way to be found so that the World Trade Organization's (WTO) multilateral trading process could move forward.
"The agricultural and food sectors are key to open markets and are key to developing trade agreements throughout the world," he said.
"According to our point of view, this will be the largest challenge... to be able to move with WTO and to move ahead with regional agreements and bilateral agreements."
Attempts by the WTO to set up a new multilateral trade accord stumbled last month partly due to the huge agricultural subsidies given to farmers in the developed world, a policy which less developed economies said hurt their farm sectors badly.
Fox, who was in the Thai capital to attend the annual APEC leaders' summit, called on the Pacific Rim grouping to reiterate its support to the stalled talks, describing it as an important step to break the impasse.
"Well... what we expect and basically would be our first choice is that out of this meeting comes a very strong, very concrete message towards bringing back the agenda of WTO to its original purpose and to move along at the pace that is needed to meet the deadline of year 2005," Fox said of Mexico's and fellow APEC member Thailand's hopes.
"So we will be very glad if the outcome of this meeting is precisely that one because we see it as urgent that a strong sign comes from this meeting of leaders which represents close to 50 percent of world gross product," he said.
"It's a big challenge but if we work together, we can be back on track and move ahead to achieve those objectives," he said.