Big hopes pinned on next APEC summit in Osaka

BEIJING (JP): Businessmen, academics and businessmen who are gathering here at the 11th General Meeting of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) are urging Asian-Pacific leaders to make a new breakthrough on the implementation of free and open trade and investment at their next summit in Osaka, Japan, in the middle of November.

They are afraid that the momentum of cooperation within the 18-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum may diminish if the third summit does not come out with a concrete action plan.

"We expect the APEC leaders to produce a blueprint on how to implement their commitment to free trade and investment as they stipulated in their Bogor Declaration," said Jusuf Wanandi, chief of the 20-member Indonesian delegation to the PECC meeting.

Jusuf sees concrete measures as crucial not only for sustaining the momentum of the APEC forum but also for justifying an annual summit of the APEC leaders.

W. Bowmann Cutter, Deputy Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Policy, said he shared Jusuf's view that the Osaka meeting should be a getting-down-to business summit.

"The APEC leaders should come out with concrete steps and define the road map for the future," Cutter said.

Chinese Vice President Rong Yiren opened yesterday the 11th General Meeting of PECC, a 15-year old non-governmental organization devoted to promoting economic cooperation in the Pacific Rim.

The three-day meeting is being attended by about 500 businessmen, officials and scholars from its 22 country member committees, including Vietnam, which was inducted as a new member only on Tuesday.

The meeting, held under the theme "Asia-Pacific Initiatives for Global Prosperity: Trade Liberalization and Development Cooperation," features several concurrent sessions discussing various aspects of Asian-Pacific economic dynamics.

However, most attention is devoted to the forthcoming third summit of APEC leaders in Osaka.

Recommendations

PECC, according to Jusuf, who is also chairman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, has submitted to APEC senior officials a statement which lists a set of its recommendations to the Osaka summit.

Among the recommendations is a call for a clearly-defined target for the implementation of trade liberalization under the Bogor Declaration, which was issued at the end of the third summit of APEC leaders in the Indonesian town of Bogor, near Jakarta, in mid-November 1994.

PECC is also asking APEC governments to implement an initial action program for concerted unilateral trade liberalization and to define in a comprehensive manner a set of medium-term objectives for substantial, measurable reductions in a wide range of impediments to international economic transactions.

"We also want APEC to devote more attention to development cooperation projects for the benefit of its least developed member economies," Jusuf said, warning against too much concentration on trade liberalization alone.

Jusuf added that PECC would issue what will be called the "Beijing Declaration" at the end of the general meeting on Friday evening, which will reaffirm its recommendations to the Osaka summit.

PECC, Jusuf added, also wants APEC to continue to maintain several basic principles for its cooperation, such as open regionalism, consensus-based decision-making mechanisms, equality and recognition of diversity in the stages of development of its member economies.

"We don't want APEC economic cooperation to be modeled on the European Union nor the North American Free Trade Agreement," he said.

PECC's statement to the APEC leaders, similar to the latest Report of the Pacific Business Forum of APEC, is quite elaborate in its argumentation on the importance of going much further than trade liberalization alone.

It argues that the scope of trade and investment liberalization should go well beyond that of traditional free trade areas by dismantling all impediments to all international economic transactions as well as development cooperation.

"Traditional trade barriers, such as tariffs, quotas are no longer the only strategic obstacles to the integration of the Asia Pacific region," the PECC statement said.

It says the reduction of these barriers should be accompanied by a reduction in the transaction costs which result from uncertainty, infrastructure problems and wide divergences in domestic regulations and administrative procedures which affect the ease of trade.

PECC's member committees are from APEC member countries Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and the United States; as well as non-APEC countries Colombia, Peru, Vietnam and Pacific Island nations. (vin)

AFTA -- Page 8