The second meeting of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) was held in Montreal, Canada from May 10 to 12, 2006. Mr. Hoang Van Dung, Chairman of the ABAC 2006, said, at this meeting, ABAC members had discussed and passed several important documents, including APEC recommendations to APEC Leaders and Ministers.
In a letter sent to APEC Leaders, ABAC re-stressed the importance of the Doha negotiation round on the global economy. ABAC also expressed worries over the possibility of the failure. According to ABAC, WTO negotiators failed to reach common agreements in opening agricultural and industrial markets, and the Doha Round is in the decisive stage. ABAC called the governments of APEC economies to have stronger measures to conclude this negotiation round. ABAC also appealed European and world business circles to support the negotiation round.
ABAC members said, the governments of APEC economies should introduce solutions to support the success of the Doha agenda in all fields: industrial, service and agricultural commodity market opening, trade facilitation. They should endeavour to remove the differenes between agricultural commodity trade and investment.
ABAC also mentioned other very important fields such as the promotion of regional trade agreements and regional free trade zones, the implementation of Busan commercial programme, the improvement of investment environment, the protection of intellectual property rights, the improvement of energy security, the encouragement of innovativeness, health issues, the measure to improve SMEs’ abilities in APEC region. At the second ABAC Meeting, the five responsible groups also argued five issues, namely the investment and trade facilitation and liberalisation, finance, capacity improvement, technology, and action programme supervision. At present, ABAC is conducting a feasibility study on APEC free trade area. ABAC is compiling several recommendations about the above fields and others, which will be sent to competent APEC agencies.
ABAC has sent a letter to stress the importance of the Doha agenda to the APEC Trade Ministers Meeting to be held in Ho Chi Minh City on June 1-2 and to call APEC ministers to add more efforts to reach a satisfactory agreement in agriculture, non-agriculture market, service and trade facilitation.
In addition to official ABAC meetings, ABAC also cooperated with APEC to organise the “Trade Facilitation” Conference and Dialogue between SOM and ABAC. This is the first time a dialogue between SOM and ABAC to be held at an unofficial meeting session. At this dialogue, SOM and ABAC spent time on the two-side cooperation. SOM highly appreciated ABAC’s contributions and stressed the importance of ABAC toward the APEC’s long-termed action programme. The SOM I Meeting in Hanoi has recognised the official role of ABAC at APEC forums and highlighted cooperative roles between APEC and ABAC.
The “Trade Facilitation” Conference was also opened in parallel with the SOM and ABAC dialogue. Representatives of APEC economies reported on economic situations and applied solutions to improve the business environment. The conference also mentioned recommendations in trade policies, capacity improvements for business circles and governments, taxation system improvements, capital source approaches, SME business supports and labour-related issues.
N.T
Vietnamese
