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.