Business summit a sign of Asian, African confidence

Zakki P. Hakim and Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Confidence is high that the Asian-African Summit will result in a new strategic partnership for the nations involved. The signs of it were in the air after the Asian-African Business Summit concluded on a high note on Friday with the signing of a joint declaration to strengthen business and economic ties between the two continents.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who officially closed the summit, expressed his confidence that it would succeed in its goal of creating a stronger alliance between Asian and African countries.

"The talks at the summit are going very well, and there is a strong commitment to forming a strategic partnership. And here at the Business Summit, the same spirit prevails," he said, referring to the summit's joint declaration.

Mbeki said he expected the declaration to reinforce in a practical way the business and economic relations between Asian and African nations so that they can help one another with each other's development, not just by looking to the developed countries in the North, but also by cooperating with one another as developing countries in the South.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called on Asian and African countries to be more comprehensive in establishing economic partnerships, incorporating mutual cooperation in such socioeconomic areas as human resources development, apart from simply entering into free trade agreements (FTA).

Information exchange was also a crucial issue in the partnerships, Koizumi pointed out in his keynote address, as the lack of this had been among the major obstacles to promoting trade and investment between Asia and Africa.

To remedy this situation, Japan would establish an online business information exchange network under the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) initiative, which it has been pursuing in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, he said.

"This network will provide relevant information on businesses in Asia and Africa via the Internet, which will hopefully contribute further to the development of trade and investment relations between the two regions," Koizumi said.

Earlier, Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) Vice Chairman Hiromasa Yonekura said that the low level of Japanese investment in Africa stemmed from the perception that Africa was geographically remote and a lack of information on African countries.

In addition, he said that international firms tended to seek out regions and countries that offered political stability, security, solid infrastructure, as well as trained and enthusiastic workers.

"It is my personal wish that Japanese private sector companies that have been operating in Asia would contribute to building infrastructure in host countries in Africa," said Yonekura, who is also the president of Sumitomo Chemical Co.

He said that it would be useful to implement realistic and substantive regional free trade zones within the African region in order to provide the minimum market size to capture foreign investment.

To strengthen economic ties with Asian countries, Nippon Keidanren has submitted a policy recommendation to the Japanese government to conclude economic partnership agreements with other Asian countries, which would eventually lead to an East Asia Free Trade Zone, Yonekura said.

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) called on countries in the region to strengthen their economic cooperation in the energy and trade sectors.

In the energy sector, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo warned how the recent surge in global oil prices could particularly hurt economies in Asia and Africa, given the fact that many of them were oil importers.

"The trend could worsen, halting the economic growth of Asian and African countries, stripping our competitiveness and our pursuit of development programs. This could increase poverty and widen the gap between the rich and the poor, which is a toxic formula for more global terrorism," she said.

"I therefore call on the Asian-African Summit to do its share in pushing for greater stability in oil prices. I call on world leaders, including the petroleum exporting countries of Asia and Africa, to offer solutions that will temper the volatility of crude oil prices."

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called on the two regions to improve the competitiveness of their economies and to embrace the era of globalization. They could benefit from the city state's experience of establishing free trade agreements (FTA).

Referring to Singapore's recent FTA with Panama, Lee vowed to expand his country's free trade with other countries, particularly in Asia and Africa.

"We have not had an FTA with any African nation," he said, "but perhaps with the revival of the Bandung Spirit and the strengthening of ties between Asia and Africa, that will change in the not too distant future."