The Auckland Challenge: APEC leaders' declaration

The Auckland Challenge: APEC leaders' declaration

The following is a full text of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) forum leaders' declaration, headlined The
Auckland Challenge, released at the completion of the APEC summit
in Auckland on Monday.

AUCKLAND (Reuters): We, the Economic Leaders of APEC,
celebrate here in Auckland 10 years of unprecedented cooperation
in our region, in pursuit of a vision of stability, security and
prosperity for our peoples. We shall continue to exercise
leadership to reach our goals and to meet the challenge we have
set ourselves.

We welcome the improved performance and prospects of our
economies since we last met, and commend the actions taken to
reform those economies affected by the crisis.

The cooperative growth strategy we adopted in Kuala Lumpur,
and sound macroeconomic policies in key economies, have supported
the restoration of confidence and growth, and have allowed us to
share growing confidence about our prospects.

We are not complacent about the risks that might impede
recovery and sustainable growth and we will sustain the momentum
for reform. Continued multilateral and bilateral support is still
important. We welcome and endorse the efforts of Ministers
through the year in pursuit of APEC's goals.

As Leaders, we accept responsibility for resisting
protectionism, opening markets further, and addressing structural
and regulatory weaknesses that contributed to the economic
downturn from 1997. We will achieve this by strengthening our
markets through regulatory reform and enhanced competition and by
improving the international framework governing trade and
investment flows. To this end we commit to the launch of a new
Round of negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

All people in our communities have a stake in the success of
APEC. We want to ensure they achieve their full potential for
improved economic and social well being. We particularly welcome
the more active participation of women and business in APEC's
work this year.

Supporting Growth through Strong and Open Markets

Improved competitiveness through ongoing reform is the road to
recovery and sustainable growth. Through APEC, we seek to expand
opportunities for business and employment growth, build strong
and open markets and ensure that our communities and economies
can participate successfully in the international economy. Open,
transparent and well-governed markets, both domestic and
international, are the essential foundation of prosperity and
enable enterprises to innovate and create wealth.

We will strengthen our markets by:

-- providing greater transparency and predictably in corporate
arid public sector governance

-- enhancing the role of competition to improve efficiency and
broaden participation by enterprises

-- improving the quality of regulation and the capacity of
regulators to design and implement policies for sustainable
growth

-- reducing compliance costs and facilitating business growth

-- building a favorable regional and international environment
for free and fair competition

In reconfirming our commitment to achieve the Bogor Goals of
free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020, we endorse the
attached APEC Principles to Enhance Competition and Regulatory
Reform. These principles provide a core part of the framework for
strengthening our markets which will better integrate individual
and collective actions by APEC economies to achieve those goals.

We accept Ministers' proposals for an initial work program to
strengthen markets. This gives priorities to strengthening market
infrastructure and human capacity in our economies and
enterprises, especially in developing economies.

It also calls for specific implementation strategies in areas
such as natural gas and e-commerce. We call upon the private
sector, including the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) and
the APEC Financiers' Group, to contribute to these efforts.

We welcome and endorse the work of our Finance Ministers, and
encourage their efforts to strengthen domestic financial markets
and secure the foundation for the return of capital to the region
by:

-- enhanced supervision of financial markets, including
through improved training of supervisors and regulators

-- developing domestic bond markets based on the just
published Compendium of Sound Practices

-- developing and applying agreed corporate governance
principles.

The alignment of the APEC Finance Ministers' process with the
APEC Leaders' process offers new opportunities for cooperation.
We instruct our Ministers to pursue greater links among APEC
forum and their work programs. We look forward to receiving a
report from Finance Ministers of further progress in dealing with
financial market issues when we next meet.

We reaffirm that individual actions by economies are the
principal means by which APEC's goal will be attained. We
acknowledge that progress towards the Bogor Goals has been
uneven, and undertake to continue concrete actions to fulfill our
commitment. We also accept the views of ABAC and other business
representatives who have called for action plans to be more
specific, transparent and comprehensive, and welcome the
initiative by Ministers to review and strengthen processes for
individual and collective actions under the Osaka Action Agenda.

APEC's trade facilitation programs are already delivering
substantial benefits -- in customs harmonization, standards and
conformance, and increased mobility of business people.

We welcome the agreed new initiatives, and instruct Ministers
to give priority to this work next year, in consultation with
business, and to better communicate the value of APEC's trade
facilitation role.

Enhanced economic and technical cooperation is essential if we
are to lift our peoples into prosperity, and narrow the
development gap among Asia/Pacific economies. The financial
crisis has underlined the importance of cooperation in human and
institutional capacity building, science and technology exchanges
and development of infrastructure. We direct our Ministers to
give special attention in the coming year to improving effective
and coordinated delivery of APEC's Ecotech and capacity building
programs, in accordance with the Manila Declaration.

We welcome Ministers' report on the APEC Food System proposed
by the ABAC, and endorse its recommendations on the development
of rural infrastructure, dissemination of technological advances
in food production and processing, and promotion of trade in food
products.

A robust regional food system that efficiently links food
production, food processing and consumption, is a vital
contribution to meeting the objectives of APEC. We instruct
Ministers to implement the recommendations, taking into account
ABAC's submission this year, and monitor annually progress
towards achieving the APEC Food System.

We recognize the key role that electronic commerce will play
in linking our economies. APEC must continue its efforts to
create a favorable environment for e-commerce in cooperation with
the private sector.

In a little over 100 days, APEC economies will face the
challenges and risks of the century date change. Intense
activities in economies and throughout the region have lessened
risks but more cooperative planning must occur. We recognize that
global interdependence means we must continue our efforts to
prepare, accelerate cross-border contingency planning, and
enhance transparency about readiness as a matter of the highest
priority. We adopt the APEC Y2K 100 Days Cooperation Initiative
to intensify cooperation for responding to potential Y2K events.
We agree to share information and expertise about Y2K impacts on
critical infrastructures during and after the date change.

APEC in the Global Economy

APEC will continue to play a leadership role in strengthening
the global economy, especially the multilateral trading system.

Strong financial systems are fundamental to achieving robust,
open and growing economies. We welcome the report from our
Finance Ministers on developments in strengthening the
international finance architecture and are encouraged by the
progress made. The establishment of the Financial Stability Forum
and the new informal mechanism to enhance dialogue among the
systematically important economies should advance cooperation on
strengthening the international financial system.

We support ongoing efforts to improve crisis prevention and
crisis resolution, and urge prompt action to improve transparency
of highly leveraged institutions. We also support the developing
consensus on the need to ensure that reforms of the international
financial system, and domestic financial markets, are mutually
reinforcing. APEC's diverse membership provides a special
contribution to discussions on domestic and international
financial reforms. In respect of both the public and private
sectors, APEC advocates:

-- greater transparency and openness including improved
reliability and timeliness of information

-- clearer accountability for decisions and judgments.

This year, APEC has a unique opportunity to give impetus to
deliberations in the WTO. We will give the strongest possible
support at Seattle to the launch of a new Round of multilateral
negotiations within the WTO, and endorse the positions adopted by
Ministers. We recognize the need to build public confidence in
this process and to improve coordination on trade related matters
among relevant international organizations. We agree on the
importance of ensuring full implementation of existing WTO
agreements. We see continued growth in international trade and
investment as the best means of achieving prosperity and
security.

In particular, we agree that the new Round should:

-- include comprehensive market access negotiations covering
industrial tariffs in addition to the already mandated
negotiations on services and agriculture

-- lead to timely and effective improvements in market access
to the benefit of all participating economies, particularly
developing economies and, consistent with this objective, provide
scope to review and strengthen rules and disciplines

-- have a balanced and sufficiently broad-based agenda and be
concluded within three years as a single package which does not
preclude the possibility of early results on a provisional basis.

We support, as one of the important objectives of the
negotiations on agriculture, the abolition of agricultural export
subsidies and unjustifiable export prohibitions and restrictions.

We call on all WTO members to join us at Seattle in a
commitment not to impose new or more restrictive trade measures
for the duration of the negotiations, as applied during the
Uruguay Round. We pledge not to impose any such measures before
the Seattle WTO Ministerial meeting.

Support for ongoing WTO negotiations will remain a key area of
APEC's work throughout those negotiations. In particular we
resolve to work actively in the negotiations to ensure that APEC
and WTO are mutually reinforcing. To respond fully to the
challenges and opportunities of today's interdependent world for
the benefit of all our peoples and to avoid fragmentation of the
international trading system, we need to ensure convergence
between regional and multilateral liberalization initiatives.

In order to achieve universality of membership, we also seek
early progress in the accession negotiations to the WTO,
including for those APEC economies that are not yet WTO members.
We issue a strong call for these accession negotiations to be
concluded at the earliest opportunity, if possible prior to
commencement of the new WTO negotiations.

Participation in Prosperity

As Leaders, we recognize our responsibilities to ensure full
and successful participation by all of our populations in the
modern economy. Technological change has irreversibly integrated
global markets for goods and services, and finance.

The effective development and application of knowledge will be
a key driver of future economic success, and we pledge to ensure
that APEC economies are to the forefront of building and sharing
their expertise in this vital sector.

Cooperation in such fields as e-education, science and
technology and life-long skills development should be
strengthened. Globalization must become an opportunity for all.

We commit to ensuring that APEC takes a leading role in
enabling developing economies to participate successfully in the
global economy, through enhancing human and institutional
capacities and progressively opening markets.

We recognize that income and wealth disparities between and
within economies can pose a challenge for social stability.
Appropriate social safety nets play a role in facilitating
economic and social adjustment. We welcome efforts by APEC
economies, and other institutions, to address social safety net
issues, and encourage further efforts to maintain employment and
environmentally sustainable growth.

In that regard, we welcome the outcomes of the Human Resources
Development and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial
Meetings. APEC economies will pursue enhanced dialogue and
continue to seek policy approaches that encourage inclusion and
economic advancement, as well as initiative and innovation.

We welcome the Framework for the Integration of Women in APEC,
which is a significant step to enhance the ability of women to
contribute to and benefit from prosperity of the region. We shall
review implementation of the Framework when we next meet.

In 1999, we have enhanced opportunities for business,
especially smaller enterprises, to make their views known in
APEC. Those views are of keen interest to us. Further dialogue
with the private sector, at all levels, is essential to maintain
the dynamism and relevance of APEC. We also look to the private
sector for support for reform.

Once again, we welcome the recommendations from the ABAC, and
thank members of the Council for their contribution in areas such
as capacity building, finance, food, e-commerce and air services.

We instruct Ministers to take the ABAC recommendations into
account during their work in 2000. We support implementation of
the eight steps for more competitive air services, and the
identification of further steps to liberalize air services in
accordance with the Bogor Goals. Tourism and air services have a
large contribution to make to development and community building
in the region.

Conclusion

As Leaders, we recognize that our role in APEC, as in our own
economies, is to set the course which will allow for sustainable
development and which will deliver a strong social dividend to
their populations. We acknowledge that economic adjustments may
be difficult, and that there is social cost which must be
reduced. But we are united in our belief that the path to
increased prosperity requires continual reform and adjustment of
our policies and outlook. An open regional framework, within
which competition and cooperation flourish, is the best means of
building a prosperous future together. We embark on APEC's second
decade confident that a deepening and enduring spirit of
openness, partnership and community is being built. The challenge
we collectively face is to maintain our momentum and deliver on
our commitment. We accept the challenge.