Soeharto urges faster trade liberalization

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto opened the Sixth Ministerial Meeting of APEC yesterday on a note of hope for an accelerated process of trade and investment liberalization among its 18 member economies.

"Should we decide to take further steps to liberalize trade and investment among us, we should confirm it in the APEC Economic Leaders' meeting on Nov.15 at Bogor," the 73-year old President, and this year's APEC chairman, told the foreign and trade ministers at the State Palace.

The two-day ministerial conference of 18 economies that account for around 50 percent of the world's output and trade was preceded by working group, committee and senior officials meetings since Nov.3.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and the United States.

Soeharto devoted a great portion of his opening address to the crucial importance of trade and investment liberalization, which he feels will give more substance to the five-year old Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

He noted that economic dynamism in the Asia- Pacific region over the past few decades has been generated by trade and investment liberalization.

"Therefore, we will continue to promote and facilitate the flow of investment and trade for ourselves and for other regions," added the President, who is also the Chairman of the 108-member Non-Aligned Movement.

He reaffirmed the role of the open market system to significantly improve the flow of international trade and investment in the region.

"All these efforts have brought a level of economic growth never achieved before to our region," added Soeharto. The president has been hailed internationally for the massive deregulation measures and sound macro-economic policies that have fueled highly respectable economic growth in the world's fourth most populous country.

He described how free and open trade has been encouraging significant investment among APEC member themselves and from investors in other regions.

"We should nurture these developments properly so as to ensure the acceleration of trade growth in our region," said the Indonesian President, currently in his sixth consecutive five- year term.

Domination

Trade and investment liberalization will dominate the agenda of the second APEC leaders meeting at Bogor on Tuesday. The main topics of their talks on those issues are the recommendations from the Eminent Persons Group and the Pacific Business Forum.

The Eminent Persons Group, in its second report to APEC leaders which was presented to Soeharto in August, recommends that APEC members adopt trade and investment liberalization fully by the year 2020.

The Pacific Business Forum, the private sector think tank set up last November by the APEC leaders themselves during their first summit on Blake Island, the United States, came up with an even bolder, more ambitious target--recommending free trade in the region by the year 2010.

The President cautioned, however, that any cooperation within APEC should take into account the diversity of economic development among its members.

"We can overcome the diversity in APEC economies through cooperation based on partnership," he said.

He also assured other countries outside the region that APEC was never designed to evolve as an exclusive and closed trading bloc.

Instead, he added, APEC members have adopted concrete measures to reach the establishment of open, free and fair global trade.

In this context, the President recalled the results of the recent meeting of APEC trade ministers here last month when they reaffirmed their strong commitment to having the speedy ratification of the World Trade Organization.

Soeharto proudly informed the ministers that Indonesia itself, by Law No.7/1994 of Nov.2, 1994, has ratified the establishment of WTO which is scheduled to start functioning early next year to replace the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.(emb/vin)

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