APEC eyes integrated, secure community with high quality growth+

YOKOHAMA, Nov. 12 Kyodo -
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum envisions becoming a community that
is more economically integrated, provides a more secure economic and social
environment, and has a higher quality of growth, a draft declaration of the
upcoming APEC leaders' meeting showed Friday.
The full text of the draft, obtained by Kyodo News, also stipulates that the
forum's long-term vision of creating a regionwide free trade area would be
pursued by such means as ''further developing and building on ongoing regional
undertakings,'' without clarifying when the timeline for realizing the vision
should be.
Among the regional undertakings are a U.S.-backed free trade initiative called
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ''ASEAN plus three,'' which groups Japan,
China, South Korea and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
and the ''ASEAN plus six,'' which adds Australia, India, and New Zealand to the
13 countries.
It would be the first time APEC has specifically referred to possible pathways
toward the creation of a Free Trade Area in the Asia-Pacific, which has so far
been seen as a relatively vague concept.
As for APEC's role toward the creation of the FTAAP, the draft says that the
forum can serve as an ''incubator'' by defining and addressing the ''next
generation'' issues of trade and investment.
To create a community that promotes high quality growth, APEC will set forth
its first-ever growth strategy which includes an action plan that focuses on
such issues as structural reform, human resource and entrepreneurship
development, and human security, the draft says.
''We will assess our progress toward implementing the Growth Strategy in
2015,'' it says.
APEC leaders, most of whom are arriving on Friday evening, will hold their
annual summit meeting on Saturday and Sunday in the major Japanese port city of
Yokohama and issue a declaration, called the Yokohama Vision, at the end.
The focus at the summit meeting will be on what kind of future vision the forum
will set amid the changing global economic landscape and with the target year
of 2010 having arrived for developed members to attain their self-imposed free
trade goals.
As a path toward a secure community, APEC will strive to implement initiatives
to secure the region's economic systems from terrorist attack, improve the
capacity of economies to respond to pandemic diseases, facilitate sustainable
agricultural production and refrain from imposing new export restrictions on
food, according to the draft.
Set up in 1989, the 21-member APEC accounts for 52.7 percent of the world's
gross domestic product and 44.4 percent of global trade by value, the Japanese
government says. It operates on the basis of nonbinding commitments.
Its members are Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea,
Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Taiwan, the United States,
and seven ASEAN members -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
==Kyodo
2010-11-12 23:49:41