APEC Members Meet to Move Forward

Delegates from 21 countries forming the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation better known as APEC met in Hanoi to discuss various issues ranging from free trade and terrorism to health and social security. This is one among a series of meetings in the week long summit.

The member economies will try and move forward in establishing the long term goals decided in previous summits. The host nation Vietnam which recently became the 150th member of the WTO has termed the theme of the summit as "Towards a Dynamic Community for Sustainable Development and Prosperity" with four sub titles namely Enhance Trade and Investment with the Busan Roadmap and the Doha Development Agenda, Improve Secure and Favorable Business Environment, Strengthen Economic and Technical Cooperation for Gap Bridging and Sustainable Development and Promote Community Linkages; and the orientation for APEC reform.

Among the important points of consideration is to find a solution to the stalled WTO summit of Doha. The delegates are expected to discuss the Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) and Free Trade Agreements (FTA). They will also work upon developing human resources, increasing the security cooperation, transparency and developing culture and tourism ties.

"APEC can lead the way for all members of the WTO to reignite negotiations and conclude the Doha Development Agenda next year," said Le Cong Phung, the deputy foreign minister of Vietnam.

APEC will also stress upon achieving its Bogor goals which were declared in 1994. These goals include creating open trade and investments by 2010 for developed members and 2020 for the developing members.

"The plan will have core components that include support for the multilateral trading system, strengthening of Individual Action Plans and Collective Action plans (CAPs/IAPs), high quality FTAs/RTAs, and strengthening of business activities in the region and capacity building," Phung said.

The summit will conclude over the weekend when Presidents and Prime Ministers of the member countries meet. It will also be attended by US President George W Bush, Russia's Vladimir Putin, China’s Hu Jintao among others.

APEC is a diverse forum with rich and capitalist countries like US to communist members like Vietnam. Papua New Guinea is the poorest member of the group. Though the forum has been criticized before for being ineffective but the applied tariffs of the member countries have been reduced from 16.9% in 1989 to 5.5% in 2004. Progress has certainly taken place but not at impressive pace.

APEC members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.