Keating welcomes ambitious APEC advisers' report
Keating welcomes ambitious APEC advisers' report
CANBERRA (Reuter): Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating on
Saturday welcomed a report by business advisers to the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which urges the 17-
member group to free up regional trade by 2010.
The Pacific Business Forum (PBF), an advisory group of
business leaders set up after last year's summit in Seattle,
presented its report to this year's APEC chairman, Indonesian
President Soeharto, on Saturday.
"We thought that bringing together 36 of APEC's top business
people would result in some forward-looking and challenging
recommendations," Keating said in a statement.
"We were right. The PBF report is an ambitious, wide-ranging
and stimulating one."
The PBF recommendation for a staggered progression to free
regional trade by 2010 compared with a plan to free trade by 2020
as outlined in an earlier advisers' report.
That report by a group of academics and government
representatives, the Eminent Persons Group, urged APEC to start
liberalizing trade in 2000 and said developed economies free
their trade by 2010.
The PBF report, obtained by Reuters, gives no starting date
but says developed economies should lower their barriers by 2002.
Both reports will be considered at the APEC summit in Bogor,
Indonesia, next month.
Australia and Singapore, which already have low trade
barriers, have lobbied their fellow APEC members to adopt an
ambitious free trade plan, saying they would prefer a free trade
deadline earlier than 2020.
APEC groups Australia, the United States, Canada, Mexico,
Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Brunei,
the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Papua New Guinea
and New Zealand. Chile will join next month.
They collectively account for 40 percent of world trade and up
to half of the world's total production.
Agreement
Australian officials said on Friday they were now confident
the APEC leaders would agree to create a regional free trading
zone before 2020. Trade Minister Bob McMullan has said he thinks
the chances are better than 50:50 that such a deal will be
struck.
But China signaled its caution on Friday about reaching a
deal, warning that agreement on free trade principles needed to
be struck first. Malaysia has also warned against APEC developing
too fast.
Keating said Australia fully supported the idea of setting a
serious but realistic date for the achievement of free trade in
the region.
"And APEC must achieve free trade in a way that is consistent
with GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)/WTO (World
Trade Organization) principles and contributes to further global
trade liberalization," he said.
Many Asian members have been worried about any APEC trade deal
that would allow some countries, and the United States in
particular, to use their trade muscle to strike discriminatory
bilateral deals with countries outside the group.
They see such moves as inconsistent with GATT principles and
hindering global trade liberalization.