Five APEC members fail to submit free trade plan
Five APEC members fail to submit free trade plan
MANILA (AFP): Five of the 18 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) have failed to submit plans for freeing trade and investment by an October 30 deadline, an official said yesterday.
APEC members have been strengthening earlier outline individual free trade plans and the detailed revised plans are to be presented to an APEC leaders' summit in the Philippines next month.
Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Federico Macaranas, chair of the series of APEC senior officials' meetings ahead a leaders' summit on Nov. 25, declined to name the economies which missed the deadline.
His statement appeared to conflict with comments earlier Thursday by APEC organizers here who said all 18 members had completed their individual plans and submitted them to Philippine President Fidel Ramos.
Ramos is host of the Nov. 25 APEC summit in the Philippines.
At Bogor, Indonesia, the APEC members agreed in 1994 to remove trade and tariff barriers in the region by 2010 for developed nations and by 2020 for developing nations.
"This is exactly what we sought to do at the beginning of the year," Ramos told a news conference.
Diplomatic sources said the APEC members who missed the deadline could be those which are scheduled to hold or which have just concluded national elections.
Among the economies caught in the election season are Japan, New Zealand, Thailand and the United States. Japanese officials earlier this month insisted they would meet the deadline.
Macaranas said 12 economies submitted their individual action plans during the final meeting of senior trade and finance officials in Manila two weeks ago, and one beat the deadline on Wednesday.
Claro Critobal, information officer of the senior officials' meetings, said they had not expected all APEC members to meet the deadline, as some had said they would need further consultations with newly elected leaders.
The free trade plans will be consolidated into the Manila Action Plan to be approved by the APEC leaders during their November 25 in the northern freeport of Subic Bay.
APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.