Ministers urge anti-dumping measures in Asia-Pacific
JAKARTA (JP): Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and Chilean Minister of the Economy Alvaro Garcia Hurtado want action to end dumping practices in the Asia-Pacific region.
Evans and Garcia told a business symposium held on the sideline of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings that dumping practices in the region hurt the efforts to harmonize policies on fair business competition in the region.
"We (APEC member economies) need to harmonize actual competition policy in the region in an Australia-New Zealand way," Evans told participants of the symposium organized by the Pacific Basin Economic Council at the Sahid Jaya Hotel.
APEC's Eminent Persons Group alleged that abuses of anti- dumping policies are a source of widespread concern and potential barriers to trade flow among the member economies.
APEC's 18 member economies deal with dumping practices in different ways. Some have established anti-dumping and anti-trust policies. Others do not even have proper laws or are just beginning to make them.
The eminent persons group recommended that APEC create a task force on anti-dumping and restrictive business practices to facilitate the implementation of free trade among member economies.
Stressing the need for anti-dumping policies in APEC countries, Garcia said, "Asia-Pacific countries should have transparent mechanisms to eliminate unfair competition. This will give stimulus to investment in the sphere."
Evans said the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has, since its inception five years ago, rapidly been transformed from a loose consultative forum into a negotiating one.
APEC, which was first floated by then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawk in Canberra in 1989, has steadily made "fascinating" progress, he said.
It began with an OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) style, mostly for dialog, technical cooperation, some degree of business support, economic cooperation in a looser sense, data compilation, policy dialog and technical cooperation, he said.
"At the present stage, specific agreements are being negotiated between member countries to produce cost-saving movements towards specifically targeted businesses, such as standard testing procedures," he said.
Poised
In his speech entitled The Benefits of Open Markets for the Asia-Pacific Region, Evans said that APEC members now assembled in Jakarta were poised for an "historic opportunity" to make the forum fully institutionalized.
He said that in the past, it would have been difficult for a developing country like Indonesia to embrace the concept of free trade.
Speaking on the domestic problems constraining the goal of free trade, Garcia said Chile, like many other economies, was convinced that opening trade was the best way to speed up growth.
He said that countries which had open their markets grew twice as fast as those which applied protectionism. Chile, he said, has grown impressively since it opened its markets 20 years ago. (pan)