Symposium Addressing Significant APEC Issues Begins in Australia
Gold Coast, Australia, August 2, 2006 -- APEC's support for World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, the regional financial outlook and human security issues are among the core topics for discussion at the APEC Australia 2007 Symposium taking place this week.
Around 160 delegates from APEC Member Economies, senior executives and academics are taking part in the discussions that will conclude with a meeting of APEC Senior Officials on Friday to discuss the outcomes of the Symposium.
With Australia preparing to host APEC 2007, the symposium follows the practice established in previous years by Viet Nam and Korea as they have prepared to Chair the APEC process.
Many of the issues covered at the two-day symposium are anticipated to be of high priority in the APEC 2007 Year.
The symposium opened with a session on APEC's trade and investment role in light of the suspension of WTO negotiations last week.
The session was moderated by Australia's Senior Official to APEC, David Spencer, who posed a series of questions relating to APEC's multilateral trade negotiations considering that the ultimate fate of WTO negotiations will be clearer by the start of 2007.
Panelists and delegates shared a range of opinions on how APEC may need to review its trade and investment liberalization and facilitation agenda, and whether APEC should encourage momentum towards more bilateral, plurilateral and sub-regional FTAs or consider an APEC-wide free-trade area.
The afternoon session on the symposium's first day considered barriers to trade that still exist despite APEC's strong liberalization record over the past decade. The range of "behind-the-border" impediments that are now viewed as being as serious as barriers at the border were also discussed.
The core question put to panelists by the moderator, Peter Drysdale from the Australia-Japan Research Centre at the Australian National University, was whether or not APEC should look to new directions, targets and milestones in relation to trade liberalization.
The symposium continues tomorrow with sessions on the regional financial outlook that will consider efforts that can be adopted to redress imbalances in the global economy and efforts to promote investment flows into emerging markets.
Regional human security will also be discussed and cover areas that have become increasingly important to the APEC agenda recently including counter-terrorism, emergency and disaster preparedness and energy security.
The final session tomorrow afternoon will look at APEC's role in the region's economic architecture in relation to the rise of new forums for interaction in the global economy.
Australia will become the host of the APEC Process at the conclusion of the APEC Viet Nam 2006 Year that will culminate with the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Ha Noi, Viet Nam, in November this year.