Busan roadmap to the Bogor goals

Romeo A. Reyes Jakarta

Roadmaps have become fashionable as an instrument for nurturing global and regional peace and economic cooperation. The most famous is the roadmap guiding the peace process between Israel and Palestine, albeit struggling in its implementation. Many roadmaps for regional economic cooperation have been adopted by ASEAN to help realize its vision of an ASEAN Economic Community by 2020, including those for accelerated economic integration in 11 priority sectors by 2010.

The latest is the Busan Roadmap to the Bogor Goals endorsed by 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders at their 13th Summit in Busan, Republic of Korea on Nov. 18-19. The Busan Roadmap was produced in the context of a mid-term stock-take (MTST) commissioned by APEC Leaders to determine how far APEC has moved towards achieving the goal of free and open trade and investment in Asia-Pacific.

Specifically, APEC's target is to achieve free flow of goods, services and investment by 2010 for developed economies and by 2020 for developing economies. The Leaders acknowledged that it was ambitious but expressed determination to realize it as a demonstration of APEC's leadership in fostering global trade and investment liberalization.

The MTST disclosed that average applied tariffs of APEC economies have been reduced from 16.9 percent in 1989 to 5.5 percent in 2004. APEC's performance towards achieving free and open trade is not unimpressive at all considering the non-binding character of its economic cooperation measures. Achieving its target is definitely ambitious but not altogether impossible, at least with respect to trade. APEC's average applied tariff is now only slightly higher than the maximum of 5 percent for ASEAN, which is targeted for outright removal by 2010 in 11 priority sectors.

Without attributing any causality, the MTST also reported that intra-APEC trade more than tripled for the same period. Its share of APEC's GDP increased from 13.8 percent in 1989 to 18.5 percent in 2004. It should be noted in this regard that APEC represents almost 50 percent of world trade and almost 60 percent of global GDP. Good progress made in APEC's trade liberalization would undoubtedly reflect significantly on global trade liberalization.

Noteworthy in this year's summit of APEC Economic Leaders is a separate statement on WTO negotiations, citing the ongoing Doha Development Round as a crucial component of the global partnership to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In particular it made a strong call on the forthcoming Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting to break the impasse in agricultural market access negotiations to unblock those in non-agricultural products and services. Interestingly, the Leaders made a call for another roadmap for completion of the Round in 2006!

Unlike other multilateral arrangements, e.g. WTO and ASEAN, whose agreements are binding, APEC explicitly recognized itself as a "forum" and its goals as "pledges" in the Busan declaration. In line with the non-binding nature of APEC's cooperation measures, the Busan Roadmap placed more emphasis on cooperation measures taken in the context of other multilateral trading arrangements.

The roadmap calls on APEC economies to redouble their collective efforts to advance the WTO Doha Development Round negotiations. It would rely on "high-quality" Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) and bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), and develop a comprehensive business facilitation program through the Busan Business Agenda.

In addition, it will strengthen its own voluntary individual and collective actions for advancing APEC's trade and investment liberalization through improved transparency and accessibility to business.

As a forum, it is necessary and understandable for APEC to rely on global, sub-regional and bilateral arrangements dealing with trade and investment liberalization, as reflected in the Busan Roadmap to the Bogor Goals.

The real value added by APEC is the collective political will, leadership, and commitment of 21 APEC Leaders that could be put to bear on global, regional and bilateral negotiations for binding trade and investment liberalization agreements. With that value added, the Bogor Goals, while remaining ambitious, can still be achieved.

The writer is former Senior Adviser, ASEAN-UNDP Partnership Facility. The views expressed herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of ASEAN or UNDP.