Waiting for stronger signal

Waiting for stronger signal

The results of the APEC Ministerial Meeting may come as a
major disappointment especially to businessmen who from the
outset have focused their attention on the proposed timetable for
free trade and investment liberalization in the region. After
all, the expectations for something bolder and ambitious had been
built up since August as soon as Indonesia, one of the least
developed among APEC's 18 economies, expressed a strong
commitment to an accelerated process of free trade and
investment liberalization in the region.

Indeed, as APEC requires more clearly-defined guidelines for
its future direction to maintain the forum's momentum, we did
expect the trade and foreign ministers to come out with something
more concrete than simply "welcoming the report of the Eminent
Persons Group (EPG)" as they said in their joint statement issued
at the end of their meeting on Saturday afternoon.

But our expectations are not entirely dashed as of yet.

Since the ministerial meeting had no relation with the second
APEC Economic Leaders Meeting at Bogor on Tuesday, in the sense
that the ministers did not prepare any agenda for that
conference, the task of providing a more positive and stronger
signal about APEC's future direction now falls on the leaders who
will be meeting in Bogor. We are still optimistic because the EPG
proposals for APEC's future directions in trade liberalization,
investment and trade facilitation and technical cooperation will
be among the main topics to be discussed by the leaders.

Nonetheless, the question now is: Did the outcome of the
ministerial meeting really fall so short of expectations?

After perusing the 72-point joint statement and taking into
account the great diversity of the interests of the APEC member
economies, in view of the widely differing stages of their
economic development, one is bound to have second thoughts about
the said failure of that outcome. Judging from the delicate
process of dialogs and the difficulty in wrapping up mutually
beneficial agreements among so diverse a group of economies, the
agreements and commitments concluded by the ministers actually
are not so disappointing.

Among the impressive items are the agreements on some concrete
programs or commitments, including the endorsement of the Non-
Binding Investment Principles, the adoption of a declaration on
human resource development, the advancement of programs in
standards and conformance, as well as customs procedures, and in
small and medium enterprise development. These commitments and
programs, we think, are a step forward toward further improving
the climate for investment and trade.

It is also encouraging to note that the ministers took another
step forward in the institutionalization process of the APEC
forum, as reflected in the decision to set up a new permanent
committee (Economic Committee) and a task force to look into ways
of strengthening the APEC Secretariat in Singapore. As APEC now
has 10 working groups, three permanent committees and several
other task forces or policy study groups, a stronger secretariat
is needed to coordinate and support those activities.

Now that the process of vigorous dialogs has been stepped up
across many sectors of economic cooperation through the working
groups and task forces, and now that concrete working programs
have been launched in several areas, it has become even more
imperative for APEC to carefully set out clear guidelines for its
future directions and to set out its goals as basic guidance to
all those activities.

We hope these guidelines will be provided by the APEC leaders,
who will be meeting in Bogor, to implement the Economic Vision
Statement they issued in Seattle last year.