APEC Business Advisory Council Meets 12-15 May in Sydney
The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), the private sector arm of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), just completed its second meeting of 2002 in Sydney, 12-15 May.
This was the second ABAC meeting of APEC's Mexico Year, during which Mexico will host the meeting of APEC Economic Leaders in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur in October. ABAC's theme for this year is "Sharing Development to Reinforce Global Security". During the course of their meeting in Sydney, ABAC members met with top leaders of government and business in Australia, including with the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Premier of New South Wales.
Prime Minister John Howard highlighted his strong support for APEC and ABAC, terming last year's APEC Leaders' Meeting in Shanghai one of the most important meetings he attended during his time as Prime Minister. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stressed Australia's support for APEC as a means to build a strong Asia-Pacific community of economies and as a driver of economic reform. NSW Premier Bob Carr emphasized the benefit of openness for growth and change.
In conjunction with the ABAC meeting, ABAC members will also hold a joint symposium with the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council on risk management, pricing and capital provisioning. The discussions will include a dinner where the Hon. Ian Campbell, Parliametary Secretary to the Treasurer, will be the keynote speaker.
ABAC comprises up to three senior business representatives from each of APEC's 21 member economies appointed by their respective heads of economy to advise APEC Economic Leaders and Ministers on issues affecting business. The Council is chaired this year by Mr. Javier Prieto de la Fuente, Senior Vice President of External Affairs of the CEMEX Group of Mexico. ABAC's work during the year will be to draft and finalize the text of its Report to APEC Economic Leaders.
As in the past years, ABAC's Report to APEC Leaders will contain recommendations on ways to improve business and investment in the APEC region and to help ensure that all in the region enjoy the benefits of globalization. ABAC members will present ABAC's recommendations to APEC Economic Leaders when they meet them in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, October 26.
At its Sydney meeting, ABAC refined their recommendations through working groups in technology, finance, business facilitation, small and medium enterprises, and monitoring APEC's Individual Action Plans (IAPs) (These IAPs detail how each APEC member plans to meet the liberalization goals agreed to by APEC Leaders to established free trade in developed APEC economies by 2010 and throughout all of APEC by 2020.)
Although the Report to APEC Leaders will be finalized in a subsequent meeting, at the Sydney meeting ABAC set the general framework for these recommendations. Two themes cut across the discussions of nearly all of the working groups. The first was the need to craft responses to the Leaders calls at their meeting last October in Shanghai to fight terrorism. Accordingly, ABAC will develop a range of recommendations on enhancing security and sharing development while simultaneously ensuring that APEC continues its work in facilitating trade and investment flows throughout the Asia-Pacific.
In the second theme, ABAC reviewed all the recommendations it has made to APEC Leaders over the past five years. In ABAC's view, some recommendations have yet to be addressed by APEC. During the remainder of this year, ABAC intends to press APEC to implement those recommendations that can be accomplished or initiated this year. As part of this campaign, ABAC will provide a pre-report to the APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting in Mexico in late May as well as to other, later meetings of APEC Ministers. This paper, finalized here at the Sydney meeting, will help ensure that APEC has the opportunity to incorporate ABAC's views into the policy-making process prior to the October Leaders' Meeting itself, when ABAC presents its final Report to Leaders.
ABAC in Sydney worked on a variety of specific issues that will be refined into recommendations by the next ABAC meeting in August. In finance, they include strengthening the security of financial systems, responding to the withdrawal of insurance coverage in the wake of last year's terrorist attacks in the U.S., micro-financing and other financing for small and medium enterprises, and improving corporate governance. The technology group worked on security and customs issues, e-government and e-commerce, and on biotechnology. In business facilitation, work focused on APEC's Food System initiatives, its work in standards and conformance, including promoting mutual recognition arrangements, preventing the growing use of Non-tariff Trade Measures and the misuse of Anti-Dumping Measures, and on supporting the Doha Development Round WTO Trade talks. The SME group worked with several of the other groups on financing for SMEs, promoting SME access to technology and creating an enabling policy environment. Finally, the group monitoring APEC's Action Plans emphasized increasing APEC's responsiveness to earlier ABAC recommendations and on confronting non-tariff measures.
ABAC's 2001 Report to APEC Leaders is available on the ABAC and APEC websites:
Additional background information about ABAC is already available at that site. To order a bound volume of the ABAC Report, contact Mr. Basilio as indicated below.