Business leaders upbeat on APEC after 2-day forum
By Prapti Widinugraheni and Meidyatama Suryodiningrat
MANILA (JP): Business leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum ended a two-day business forum here Saturday with a renewed vision on APEC.
While acknowledging APEC's benefits for business, delegates said they were responsible for building an "APEC community".
Kenneth Lindhorst, a delegate from United States-based AT&T, said the APEC Business Forum (ABF) had helped businesspeople see that each country in APEC could choose how far and how fast it wanted to go.
"In APEC, every member economy still has its own sovereign rights, but at the same time their governments are aware that increasing cooperation is positive both for the government and the business sector," he told The Jakarta Post.
A Filipino delegate, Jesus Estanislao, said the forum reminded big business that APEC should also help small and medium enterprises.
"The last thing (Philippine President Fidel Ramos) wants to see is APEC being hijacked by big businesses," he said on Ramos' speech to open the ABF.
Ramos told the executives on Friday that "the APEC vision is about improving people's lives".
"Liberalizing and facilitating trade and investment alone cannot do... We need to develop a culture for solving problems together out of a deep sense of obligation to build a community of APEC economies," he said.
APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.
APEC aims to achieve regional free trade and investment, setting 2010 and 2020 as deadlines for developed and developing countries respectively.
Roberto Romulo, the chairman of the APEC Business Advisory Council, said ABF helped businesspeople understand that APEC "does indeed have a future".
"It will also make them realize that they must work hand in hand with the government," he said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who addressed the forum's closing ceremony on Saturday, said it was "unrealistic and grossly unfair" to coerce APEC's less-advanced member economies to undertake liberalization measures at a pace and manner "beyond their capacity".
"APEC must never result in poor member countries becoming more and more dependent on richer members," he said.
APEC members' economies have been growing 7.6 percent yearly on average. Trade within the region has grown about 87 percent in the last five years, and its exports make up 44 percent of the world's total.
Mahathir called for stronger development cooperation within APEC, saying it had "not been given the attention it deserves".
"Liberalization alone will not succeed if it is not accompanied by development cooperation," Mahathir said.
He said poorer economies could not be considered ready to liberalize their markets until they had become exporters, and were benefiting from their own raw materials.
"It is understandable that business executives are impatient with the slow rate of progress in liberalization, harmonization and cooperation, and want political leaders to share their sense of urgency. Still business leaders must understand that political leaders must do what is best for their respective economies as a whole," Mahathir said.