Australia, Singapore agree on APEC free trade aims
Australia, Singapore agree on APEC free trade aims
CANBERRA (Reuter): Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said yesterday they had agreed that the nations in APEC forum should adopt a specific timetable to free up trade in the region.
Leaders of the 17-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum are due to meet at Bogor in Indonesia in November and a proposal for free trade in the region by 2020 will be high on the agenda.
Goh said APEC should aim to set defined dates for trade liberalization.
"We should try and aim for that, but we should also be sensitive to the concerns of other countries," Goh told a news conference with Keating following a two-day visit where he also met trade and defense officials.
An APEC preliminary group has already recommended that the forum adopt a blueprint towards free trade in the region, starting in 2000 and ending with completely free trade for all forum countries by 2020.
And the APEC-endorsed Pacific Business Forum has urged APEC to aim for free regional trade by 2010.
"We will approach this with some elasticity in mind -- it can be a range of dates starting from 2005 and ending in 2020 for countries in various categories," Goh said. "But we should aim for some dates."
Dates
Keating has previously endorsed the proposal for specific target dates for free trade. "The important thing is the start dates," Keating told the news conference.
"The finish dates tend to be something that local industries very quickly pick up in the changed environment and they arrive more quickly than the nominal end points set by governments -- it's really about getting a beginning," he said.
APEC, which accounts for about half of world's economic output, is made up of Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States.
Chile is to join at the November meeting.
Keating said he and Goh had similar positions on how the group should develop.
"Prime Minister Goh and I have a fairly close view on how we think APEC should develop and included in that view a very strong belief that we should give (Indonesian) President Soeharto every support in making the meeting a success," Keating said. Goh also emphasized a start date.
"If we can achieve something by the year 1998 then we would regard that as a good start date," Goh said, adding an agreement to start trade liberalization should be reached by 1995.
Singapore would prefer APEC members choose 2010 as an end date, but realizes some of the less-developed countries were more likely to accept 2015 or 2020, Goh said.
Goh also said he supported Malaysia's initiative for an East Asian trade grouping known as the East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) as long as it did not clash with APEC.
"To us APEC is a very important organization, and the EAEC must not in any way affect the progress of APEC," Goh said.
Keating and Goh also announced the setting up of a fund for feasibility studies into joint Australia-Singapore export initiatives into other Asian countries.
In a speech on Monday, Goh said Australian companies could form partnerships with Singaporean companies to expand in Asia, noting expertise among many Australian firms in tourist resort development, mining and infrastructure development.