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Review of APEC Senior Officials' Meetings
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| MON, OCT 15, 2001 |
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Senior APEC Officials have met four times this year. Their work determines the outcome of this year's economic leaders' meeting.
The senior officials are calling for the early launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations. Those talks, which are held by the World Trade Organization, have been stalled since 1999.
Wu Hailong, APEC Senior Official, China, said, "Although APEC is not a negotiation body, leaders from member economies can contribute to the WTO talks by expressing their political will and determination."
Nonetheless, APEC members have agreed on greater openness amongst themselves. In what's known as the Shanghai Accord, member economies have pledged to keep each other informed of their trade rules and let others supervise their trade liberalization plans.
APEC has a timetable of free trade and investment that requires developed members to eliminate all their tariffs by 2010. Developing economies must do the same by 2020.
The officials have agreed on another key point which they're calling the "e-APEC Strategy." It aims to better use information technology to increase the growth of its member economies.
Larry Greenwood, APEC senior official from the United States said, "The plan has three sections. One is on basic economic policies, which are necessary to simulated innovation, entrepreneurship and investment in infrastructure. The second is on legal and regulatory aspects of e-commerce, as well as liberalization of services related to e-commerce."
The third section deals with training and education, so that people in the region will know how to use the new information technology.
And the officials want to make sure that poor members are not left behind in globalization.
George Troup, APEC senior official from New Zealand, said, "We've talked a lot about capacity building for member economies, helping them to participate in the WTO and trade negotiations, and to implement their commitments. We've talked a lot about economic and technical cooperation in APEC."
Troup says officials have worked out what they call an "Ecotech Action Plan". The plan requires each member economy to submit its own plan explaining, among other things, the way it does business.
Editor: Vicki
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