Private sector asked to help draft action plan for APEC
Private sector asked to help draft action plan for APEC
JAKARTA (JP): The government has urged the private sector to
play a bigger role in formulating Indonesia's individual action
plan which will be proposed to APEC leaders in their fourth
summit in November and identify opportunities in other members'
markets.
"We should do our best in formulating our individual action
plan so that it will be applicable," said the foreign ministry's
Director General of Foreign Economic Relations Soemadi D.M.
Brotodiningrat yesterday.
At a gathering organized by the Forum for Inter-Associations
of Indonesian Companies, Soemadi noted that intensive
consultations between the government and the private sector,
including small and medium-scale businesses, is a must to
discover the strengths and weaknesses of the Indonesian economy.
Indonesia and the other 17 members of the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) will present their individual action
plans during the leaders' meeting in the Philippines.
APEC, which had a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of
US$13.4 trillion in 1993 or 56 percent of the world's GDP,
comprises of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong,
Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand
and the United States.
The individual action plans will be used as bases for the
implementation of APEC's Osaka Action Plan, which was agreed upon
by the group's members last November in Osaka, Japan.
The Osaka Action Plan consists of three main components,
namely the liberalization of trade and investment, facilitation
of trade and investment, and technical and economic cooperation.
The Osaka plan was also a follow-up to the Bogor Declaration
requiring APEC's developed member economies to liberalize trade
and investment by 2010 and its developing members by 2020.
Approach
According to Soemadi, the liberalization and facilitation of
trade and investment are based on a concerted unilateral
approach, which was approved during the Osaka meeting. The
unilateral approach will be later combined with APEC's collective
actions.
Under the concerted unilateral approach, members are allowed
to formulate their own individual action plan with the
stipulation that it complies with nine general principles --
including flexibility, comparability, nondiscrimination,
simultaneous start, continuous process and different timetables.
Soemadi noted that in its individual action plan, Indonesia
will propose goods to be subjected to immediate and gradual
liberalization.
"Of course, we will consider in what sectors we're strong and
in what sectors we're still weak," he said, adding that "we need
the participation of the private sector, including small
businesses, to identify our strengths and weaknesses".
Soemadi said that businesspeople should also monitor the
individual action plans of the other APEC members to find
potential business opportunities for Indonesia.
"There could be opportunities for us to do business in the
markets of other members," he said. (13)