Trade and investment liberalisation tops agenda for ABAC
By Ng Baoying, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 09 November 2009 2151 hrs

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SINGAPORE: The business council advising APEC leaders is pushing for commitments to a deadline to develop the framework for a proposed Free Trade Area for Asia-Pacific by next year.

It believes this will help liberalise trade and investment in the region.

The issue was central to the first day of talks by the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) meeting in Singapore which will culminate in the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting this weekend.

Lowering trade barriers around the world to increase global trade has been on the world agenda since 2001, mainly through the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

Eight years on, and progress has still been slow. The business community within APEC now believes that chances of getting a commitment to conclude the Doha Round of world trade talks in the near term are slim.

Chong Siak Ching, chairperson, APEC CEO Summit 2009 Organising Committee, said: "Generally, there is a very strong sense of frustration about the lack of progress at the DDA negotiations.

"In October, representatives from ABAC went up to Geneva and spoke with some of the members and leaders involved in negotiations, including Mr Pascal Lamy himself, and also expressed the impatience of the business community to want to see progress.

"And the group came away feeling that there's not a very high chance of conclusion in the near term, but still hope that the economies and countries will give it a final push. But I'm not waiting for that to happen.

"Within APEC, we've proposed an alternative that while talks at DDA may stall, within our own community, we should look for another fallback plan and that is the free trade area of the Asia Pacific, or FTAAP for short."

The FTAAP that is being proposed will look at opening up borders for the flow of goods and services, investment, capital, labour within the APEC region. For now, the business community will try to persuade APEC leaders to commit to a timeline to develop a proposed framework for the FTAAP by 2010.

Teng Theng Dar, chairman, APEC Business Advisory Council, said: "We would like to see ourselves working together with the APEC process to see in what way we can fast track the realisation of the FTAAP which is the concept that we have proposed to APEC that will help us go towards regional economic integration."

But no one is denying there will be challenges for FTAAP.

Gempachiro Aihara, incoming ABAC Chair for 2010, said: "Each economy is different - huge economy, small economy. There are economies with already a lot of FTA agreements, bilateral agreements like here in Singapore, and some countries not so much. It takes time."

And there are some who disagree that the FTAAP should be a fallback plan to the DDA.

Lindsay Fox, founder, Linfox, said: "I think we've got to go all the way and get an outcome. It's silly to look for the minimisation of any programme. If we're going to go all the way out to get an outcome, that's in the best interests of everybody or it's a waste of time."

APEC business leaders will continue to meet in the next few days for more discussions. They will have a consolidated set of issues and recommendations to be shared with the 21 APEC leaders on Saturday. - CNA/vm