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.