7 - Towards an Assessment of APEC Trade Liberalization and Facilitation

Summary

APEC's Trade Liberalization and Facilitation Objectives

APEC's trade and investment agenda began to take shape in 1993, with the release of the first report of the Eminent Persons’ Group (APEC/ EPG 1993), followed by the articulation at the 1993 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting (APEC/LM 1993) in Seattle of the vision of the Asia- Pacific as a region of free trade and investment. This was followed at the 1994 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting (AELM) by the landmark Bogor Declaration (APEC/LM 1993), in which APEC's members committed themselves to the establishment of free trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region. The Bogor Declaration states that the goal is to be achieved by 2010 in the case of the developed members of APEC, and by 2020 in the case of the developing members. No definition of “developed” or “developing” economy status was provided then nor has one been provided since, so that the choice of target applicable to each individual APEC member is effectively a matter of self-selection. There has likewise been no definition of the precise meaning of “free trade and investment”, leaving the way open for debate whether free trade means “zero tariffs” or the reduction of tariffs to a range of very low values, such as 0–5 per cent.

The Bogor Declaration envisaged that action towards the achievement of the free trade and investment targets should begin immediately. This was a significant departure from the caution expressed only a short time earlier in the second EPG report, which had recommended that implementation should begin in 2000. The Pacific Business Forum, on the other hand, had recommended that action should begin immediately, and it was this approach that was adopted in the Bogor Declaration. This confident approach reflected the high expectations which were held for APEC at that time, and which were maintained during the subsequent three years as APEC moved quickly forward to establish first the Osaka Action Plan (OAA) in 1995 (APEC/MM 1995) and then the Manila Action Plan for APEC (MAPA) in 1996 (APEC/MM 1996), before embarking on the ambitious Early Voluntary Sector Liberalization (EVSL) initiative in 1997.