Big hopes pinned on next APEC summit in Osaka

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