Business leaders call for action agenda for APEC
Business leaders call for action agenda for APEC
SINGAPORE (AFP): An influential group of business leaders in
the Pacific Rim on Saturday sought a planned schedule of tariff
reductions by each of the 18 economies within the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to achieve free trade in the
region.
The Pacific Business Forum (PBF) also asked for a plan by each
economy to phase out its investment barriers and trade
impediments so that a regional free trade plan would be given a
"greater push" at the APEC summit in Osaka in November.
"We want to develop a roadmap that will lead to tangible
results," Les McCraw, co-chairman of the Pacific Business Forum,
told reporters here after a two-day meeting of the forum. "This
will not be just a wish list. We want timetables and specific
steps."
The Singapore meeting is the first of three meetings the forum
will hold before it finalizes a blueprint for presentation to the
APEC leaders in Osaka.
The leaders at the second annual summit in November last year
in Bogor, Indonesia, agreed to work towards "free and open trade
and investment in the Asia Pacific" no later than 2020, with
industrialized members meeting the target a decade earlier.
APEC comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New
Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan,
Thailand and the United States.
APEC senior officials are currently working towards
formulating a conceptual structure for an action agenda for
liberalizing free trade. The structure will be vetted by a
ministerial meeting before submission to the Osaka meeting.
Blueprint
The Bogor APEC leaders meeting asked the PBF to follow up on
its earlier report "A Business Blueprint for APEC," to assess
improvements made by APEC in the business environment, and make
further recommendations for stepping up regional cooperation.
The PBF comprises prominent company chairmen and chief
executives appointed by the APEC leaders in 1994 to advise them
directly on trade and investment liberalization in the region.
The forum was also working on other "specific areas of action"
to be recommended to the leaders, including a dispute settlement
mechanism supplementary to the World Trade Organization's (WTO's)
mechanism, PBF officials said Saturday.
Other topics mulled by the forum included easing the mobility
of business travelers throughout the APEC economies and ways to
encourage small and medium enterprises, they said.
"The leaders made it clear to us that they want a business
perspective, not a bureaucratic or political perspective, and we
plan to give it to them. Our recommendations will be both
practical and bold," said another PBF co-chairman, Minoru
Murofushi.
Murofushi said the PBF should set an "ambitious and hard-
hitting agenda for Osaka."
The PBF would further discuss its proposals at its next two
meetings to be held in Japan in July and the United States in
September.