5 - Realistic Approach over the Past Decade

Summary

The Busan Road Map: Towards a Better Business Environment

In Chapter 2 we saw that APEC's momentum for liberalization heightened in 1993–96, but decreased after the Asian currency crisis. Instead APEC has shifted to a realistic strategy of improving the business environment of its participants in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Although APEC is strictly constrained in its liberalization attempts by its nonbinding framework, many economies have voluntarily implemented facilitation measures such as standards and conformance, customs procedures, and business mobility once they find that it helps their own trade and investment expansion. With increasing globalization and people, goods, and money moving freely across borders in the 2000s, these facilitation measures made a big contribution towards this development. As was shown in Chapter 2, the ratio of commodity trade, services, and direct investment to GDP increased distinctly in many economies. This ratio differs according to the size of an economy, but in the 2000s it increased in all econom ies, regardless of their size. The increase was most distinct in the European Union, but APEC economies followed the European Union closely (Chapter 2). Let us pick up major measures highlighted in the various Leaders'sand Ministerial Statements.

In 2000, in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, the APEC leaders committed to not letting any economy be left behind the digital divide under the IT revolution. The following year in Shanghai, they announced the Shanghai Accord of “reducing the business transaction cost across border by 5% for five years”. In 2002, at the APEC Conference in Mexico, the Trade Facilitation Action Plan (TFAP I: 2002–06) was established and promptly implemented. It instructed the abolition of administrative barriers in standards and conformance, customs procedures, and business mobility. It duplicated the Osaka Action Agenda towards achieving the Bogor Goals, but strengthened it by setting a concrete target of “reducing 5% in 5 years”. This tended to be offset by the prolonged customs procedures put in place under strengthened security systems at airports and harbours after the 11 September attacks in 2001, but they managed to achieve this target.