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APEC seeks balanced growth
By Yoko Kubota and Yoko Nishikawa |
November 11, 2010, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ASIA-PACIFIC leaders will call for policies that promote balanced growth and start work on creating a vast free trade area in the world's most dynamic economic region.
In a draft statement to be issued at this weekend's summit of the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the leaders will adopt what they called their first real effort to provide a framework for long-term growth in the region.
The group includes the world's three biggest economy - the United States, China and Japan.
APEC trade and foreign ministers yesterday agreed to avoid taking any new protectionist measures for the next three years, and urged a conclusion of the Doha round of trade liberalization talks in 2011, Japanese officials said.
The ministers said they would build on the 43 bilateral and mini-free trade pacts with each other.
Businesses have long urged a single pact for the Pacific rim to simplify and harmonize the plethora of standards and rules that has been a by-product of the many mini-pacts.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations - most of whom are APEC members - has its own free trade area and is building an European Union-style economic community. ASEAN also has various pacts with APEC members China, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Those agreements, and a US-led one called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is being negotiated among eight nations, will be the main building blocks of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara told reporters.
An Asia-Pacific free trade area would be a formidable force in world trade. APEC economies account for 53 percent of global economic output and 44 percent of world trade.
The ministers met ahead of a G20 summit of rich and emerging economies in Seoul today and tomorrow, where leaders will try to soothe tensions over global economic imbalances and currencies. APEC leaders meet at the weekend.
"US businesses still have concerns about policies that inhibit their ability to compete in Asia-Pacific," US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said in a speech in Tokyo.
In a draft statement to be issued at this weekend's summit of the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the leaders will adopt what they called their first real effort to provide a framework for long-term growth in the region.
The group includes the world's three biggest economy - the United States, China and Japan.
APEC trade and foreign ministers yesterday agreed to avoid taking any new protectionist measures for the next three years, and urged a conclusion of the Doha round of trade liberalization talks in 2011, Japanese officials said.
The ministers said they would build on the 43 bilateral and mini-free trade pacts with each other.
Businesses have long urged a single pact for the Pacific rim to simplify and harmonize the plethora of standards and rules that has been a by-product of the many mini-pacts.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations - most of whom are APEC members - has its own free trade area and is building an European Union-style economic community. ASEAN also has various pacts with APEC members China, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Those agreements, and a US-led one called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is being negotiated among eight nations, will be the main building blocks of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara told reporters.
An Asia-Pacific free trade area would be a formidable force in world trade. APEC economies account for 53 percent of global economic output and 44 percent of world trade.
The ministers met ahead of a G20 summit of rich and emerging economies in Seoul today and tomorrow, where leaders will try to soothe tensions over global economic imbalances and currencies. APEC leaders meet at the weekend.
"US businesses still have concerns about policies that inhibit their ability to compete in Asia-Pacific," US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said in a speech in Tokyo.
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