The 2013 First EC Plenary meeting was held in Jakarta, Indonesia in February 2013 and was attended by all members as well as representatives and guests from the Competition Policy and Law Group (CPLG), the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) Chair, the Senior Finance Officials’ Meeting (SFOM) Chair, the Subcommittee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) Chair, the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Key discussion and decisions from the First Plenary meeting included:

• Discussion of the CPLG and the five Friends of the Chair (FotC) groups’ work plan for 2013;
• Continued discussion on the APEC New Strategy for Structural Reform (ANSSR), including the ANSSR mid-term progress reporting to be implemented in 2013 and various on-going capacity building activities to assist member economies with implementation of their ANSSR plans;
• Deliberations of the outline and timeline for APEC Economic Policy Report (AEPR) 2013 report on Promoting Fiscal Transparency and Public Accountability and selection of Good Regulatory Practices (GRP) as the topic for AEPR 2014;
• Briefing and presentation on the State of the Regional Economy and Its Policy Implications by the APEC Policy Support Unit (PSU) and PECC; and
• Deliberation on the progress of strengthening the implementation of the GPR, including the Regulatory Impact Analysis training held in 2012 that trained 600 officials in 10 economies, as well as the web portal project for GRP which started in December 2012; and
• Endorsement of the self-funded project by Hong Kong, China on the Simplified Authentication Process for the Production of Public Documents Abroad through the Use of Hague Apostille Convention.

Two policy discussions were also held. The first was on “Competitive Neutrality,” which was led by Australia and featured the summary findings of the OECD Competitive Neutrality Report. The discussion considered the role and application of competitive neutrality governance policy as well as best practices to maintain a level playing field between public and private business. The second was on “Best Practices for ICT Strategy and Public Sector Governance,” led by Public Sector Governance FotC Coordinator (Chinese Taipei). Members discussed how to leverage ICT to strengthen public sector governance, including public service quality and government transparency. The APEC Macro ANSSR Workshop: Mid-term progress in implementing ANSSR was also held in February 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The workshop reviewed the progress in implementing ANSSR, with a focus on the following four areas among the five ANSSR priority areas: (1) more opening, well-functioning, transparent, and competitive markets; (2) better functioning and effectively regulated financial markets; (3) sustained SME development and enhanced opportunities for women and vulnerable populations; and (4) effective and fiscally sustainable social safety net programs. Participants shared best practices and structural reform challenges in implementing the ANSSR plan.

Economic Committee Initiatives from 2010 to 2012

The EC undertook various activities in the areas of structural reform, including the Leaders’ Agenda to Implement Structural Reform (LAISR), the APEC New Strategy on Structural Reform (ANSSR), the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) plan and regulatory reform.

• The EC in 2009 identified five priority areas for regulatory reform in APEC economies including, starting a business, getting credit, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and dealing with permits. These priority areas are the focus of the APEC "Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) Action Plan," which was launched by the Leaders in 2009. The Action Plan sets an APEC-wide aspirational target to make it 25 percent cheaper, faster and easier to do business within APEC economies by 2015, with an interim target of a 5 percent improvement by 2011. Led by "champion economies," a number of capacity building programmes were carried out from 2010 to 2012 focusing on the necessary regulatory reforms in the five priority areas. Awareness-building workshops (Phase I) have been conducted on each of the priority areas, and current attention is on developing more customised capacity building measures in those economies that have sought specific assistance on their reform efforts (Phase II). In 2012, the APEC EoDB 2012 Stocktake Workshop was held to assess progress on and identify work still needed to be refined in the five priority areas. Based on the discussion at the workshop, the EC published the AEPR 2012 on EoDB in October 2012, which stated that APEC’s 21 member economies improved the ease of doing business in the Asia-Pacific by 8.2 percent between 2009 and 2011, exceeding their five percent target for the period and paving the way for greater economic activity in the region.
  
  
• On structural reform, a seminar on "Impacts of Structural Reform and LAISR Stocktake", was held in Hiroshima, Japan in February 2010. The seminar discussed three areas: first, the issue of structural reforms in the telecommunications, transport and energy sectors in APEC; second, an examination of the impacts of those reforms, drawing on the findings of a PSU research project; and third, a stocktake of the progress that has been made in implementing the LAISR. In 2011, a series of capacity building events were held to build specific understanding of what ANSSR would seek to accomplish, including: Symposium on APEC's New Strategy for Structural Reform 2011 (ANSSR Symposium) in May 2011; ANSSR Residential Training on Structural Reform in August 2011; and Workshop on Assessing Approaches to Structural Reform in September 2011. Since 2012, various capacity building activities have been pursued that focus on assisting APEC economies with implementation of their ANSSR plans endorsed in 2011. 
  
  
• With regard to the area of regulatory reform, an "APEC-OECD Joint Seminar on the APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform on Japan" was held in Hiroshima, Japan in February 2010. This Seminar shared the results of Japan's self-assessment under the Integrated Checklist among the EC members and discussed the further utilisation of the Checklist to facilitate regulatory reform in the Asia-Pacific region. Aside from Japan, the other APEC economies that have conducted an assessment are the United States; Hong Kong, China; Chinese Taipei; Australia; and Korea.
   
• The workshop on “Using Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) to Improve Transparency and Effectiveness in the Rulemaking Process” was held in Washington DC in March 2011. The workshop focused on how regulatory impact analysis (RIA) can be used to help develop more effective and transparent regulations, which can also contribute to improved public consultation in the rulemaking process. A series of RIA training for APEC developing economies were delivered in 10 economies in 2012 in order to encourage the development of ‘better regulation’ and assist economies develop a domestic framework for best practice regulation.
  
  
• The workshop on “Advancing Good Corporate Governance by Promoting Utilization of the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance” was held in Washington DC in March 2011. The workshop discussed the 2010 APEC Economic Policy Report on Corporate Governance and specific steps that can be taken to enhance regimes for corporate governance with reference to the OECD Principles for Corporate Governance.