APEC Finance Ministers first met in 1994 in Honolulu, USA. Since then they have met annually, most recently in August 2007 in Queensland, Australia. Meetings are also held between the Ministerial meetings at the Finance and Central Bank Deputies and Senior Finance Officials (previously known as the Technical Working Group) levels.
Pursuant to these policy initiatives, a number of workshops and seminars are planned in 2008:
Fiscal Space - Reviewing, Assessing and Prioritising Government Expenditure (Second Workshop), Jakarta, Indonesia, 14-15 May 2008. The aim of this workshop is to build on the first seminar and increase understanding, practical skills and application of fiscal space concepts in ways that are suitable for each participating economy, and immediately usable.
Building Fiscal Sustainability Through Better Risk Management of Public-Private Partnership Projects (Segment 2 Workshop), Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, 19-20 May 2008. This capacity building activity will consist of a one-day seminar (19 May) opened to all APEC member economies and a follow-up action planning workshop (20 May) designed only for those participants from targeted economies. The seminar will look at the current share, trends and issues in developing PPP markets in the region while the workshop will further develop the action plans that participants have formulated to address economy-specific issues to support better risk management of PPPs.
As part of the "Initiative on Ageing Issues in APEC", a high-level seminar co-hosted by APEC and the IMF will take place in Seoul on May 21-23, 2008. This objective of the workshop is for participating member economies to explore and share experiences on economy-specific as well as general issues regarding ageing and financial markets in APEC. The participants will include high level government officials and experts from academia.
Senior Finance Officials met in Lima in November 2007 to begin work on the policy themes for the 15th Finance Ministers' Meeting to be held on 5-6 November, 2008, in Trujillo, Peru. The themes are "Results-based budgeting" and "Capital markets reform."
Examination of these themes, papers and relevant case studies are now in preparation by officials of both member economies and partners in the FMP process, including ABAC, the World Bank and IMF. Senior Finance Officials will meet again in Cusco, Peru, from 9-11 July to continue this preparatory work for the Finance Ministers Meeting in November.
In 2008 Senior Finance Officials will also work with Economic Committee officials in preparation for the APEC Structural Reform Ministers' Meeting, to be hosted by Australia in August 2008. This meeting will address the benefits of structural reform, with a particular focus on competition and regulatory reform; strategies for successful implementation of reform, including political considerations; and robust legislative and institutional frameworks.
