The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum was set up in 1989 with a focus on liberalising trade and investment and helping business and Economic and Technical Cooperation (ECOTECH), which has benefited all its members.
Vietnam became a member of the forum in November, 1998, raising the total number of member countries to 21.
APEC has a total population of 2.7 billion people, accounting for 42% of the world population. APEC GDP represents 55% of the global figure while its trade revenue makes up 49% of the world trade value.
APEC has a mission to boost trade and investment liberalization, assist businesses and create favourable environment for the corporate community.
In investment and trade liberalization,APEC focuses on opening markets and cutting and then abrogating tariffs. It also pursues non-tariff. APEC had decreased the average tariff to 6.4% in 2004 from 16.6% in 1988.
In business assistance, APEC has slashed business transaction fees by 5% and will reduce it by an additional 5% in 2010.
APEC business advantaging programmes focus on improving trading information access, improving benefits of information technology and telecom, connecting growth-fostered business promotion policies and strategies, and helping goods transportation and entrepreneurs’ travelling by issuing APEC Business Travel Card.
APEC is making every effort to pursue removing Behind-the-Border Barriers in a bid to facilitate its exporters and importers’ business activities, cut down production costs, foster growth, supply cheaper goods and service and create more jobs.
Technical cooperationas well as other activities involving competence is aimed at helping APEC economies take advantages of global trading opportunities as well new economic forms.
APEC including economic superpowers of the U.S., Japan, China and Russia as well as emerging economies, has been the most dynamic economic region with a diversified demand and great business opportunities.
Participating in APEC opens new opportunities to enterprises but also forces them to actively study new markets and take advantage of APEC corporate assistance mechanism. In addition, enterprises of APEC economies benefit from programmes on business administration competence enhancement and training cooperation, contract negotiation, and export-import professional competence. Annually, APEC spends part of its budget to fund corporate assistance programmes based on initiatives by member economies.
Concerning the recommendations to ABAC Leaders, Vietnam Business Forum would like to extract the opinion of ABAC Chair 2009 Teng Theng Dar in his letter to APEC Chair 2009 Lee Hsien Loong.
We believe APEC Leaders should now take the opportunity to show leadership in the region and to non-APEC members by taking the following actions which reinforce their commitment to achieving the Bogor Goals and the vision of the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP):
First, APEC Leaders must abide by their commitment to standstill on the implementation of any new barriers to trade. Our own observation reveals a disturbing trend towards increased protectionism in the form of new barriers to trade and increasing trade remedies. While it appears that many of these actions may be consistent with WTO provisions, we strongly believe they are against the spirit of the G20 and APEC Leaders’ commitments. To be effective, the standstill commitments must apply to any measure, including fiscal stimulus, impacting negatively on trade and investment. For such protectionist measures that are already in place, we urge that they be withdrawn.
Second, Trade Ministers should be instructed to accelerate work on initiatives aimed at promoting immediate steps to enhance regional economic integration, regulatory reforms and physical connectivity. Priority should be given to accelerating the implementation of trade facilitation measures identified by the World Bank as having the potential to lead to an increase of US$280 billion in intra-APEC trade. APEC member economies should aim for a measurable reduction in transaction costs of 5% by the end of 2009 instead of the current target of 2010. APEC should implement elements of the trade facilitation package in the Doha Development
Agenda (DDA).
Third, APEC members who implement fiscal stimulus measures should do so in a way which enhances global demand - not only domestic demand - with a clear vision toward facilitating structural reforms which will prevent future occurrence of problems currently experienced and promote sustained economic growth. In addition, such fiscal measures should enhance SME finance since the activities of SMEs contribute significantly to job creation. One important way to accelerate the rebuilding of consumer confidence in the immediate term is for business and governments to join forces and partner in the development of programs that stimulate consumption and at the same time are aligned with the promotion of other government policy priorities such as health, hygiene and sustainability. APEC provides a unique platform for public private partnership that should be leveraged to promote and facilitate deployment of these programs.
Finally, given that the WTO Doha Round - much to our concern - is unlikely to be completed before the end of 2009, APEC Leaders should instruct their Trade Ministers to take responsibility for efforts to reach agreement on modalities for the negotiations before the northern summer break and to set a deadline for conclusion of the Round in early 2010, building on the progress already made. It is a source of considerable frustration to us as business leaders that, after eight years of negotiations and countless calls for urgency, the Doha Round remains uncompleted.
We stand ready to discuss the above recommendations with you in further detail and we look forward to our annual dialogue later in the year.
Thoa Nguyen
Vietnamese
