APEC leaders basically agree on first-ever growth strategy+

YOKOHAMA, Nov. 13 Kyodo -
Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Saturday basically
agreed that the thriving region should seek better quality of growth through a
long-term strategy, as they try to work out a new APEC vision that would also
focus on how the forum will move toward a regionwide free trade area.
The growing significance of the region was underscored by some of the 21
leaders on the first day of their two-day summit and a related event in
Yokohama, with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is chairing the summit,
stressing that the Asia-Pacific ''bears heavy responsibility to lead the
world's growth.''
U.S. President Barack Obama told a gathering of APEC business leaders that
Washington will pursue a stronger presence in the Asia-Pacific, a market which
he sees as vital to increasing U.S. exports.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said the region's emerging markets will continue to
offer ''enormous opportunities'' to the world, although it needs to improve its
infrastructure and innovation capability.
As Japan hosted the annual APEC summit for the first time since 1995 in the
major port city near Tokyo, anti-China protestors as well as activists against
further trade liberalization were seen in the city with ties between Japan and
China having soured recently.
Kan is facing the challenging task of not only steering the diverse forum's
summit meeting but also erasing the image that he is struggling in his
relations with China and Russia in the face of renewed territorial spats.
During Saturday's sessions in a room decorated like a Japanese-style garden
with bamboo plants around the wall and a cutting-edge digital replication of a
pond with moving fish on the central floor, the Pacific Rim leaders affirmed
they would adopt the forum's first-ever collective growth strategy.
They are slated to issue a declaration called the ''Yokohama Vision'' at the
end, which is intended to show the 21-year-old forum's future direction 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.
Against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, the growth strategy seeks to
improve the region's ''quality of growth'' through job creation, structural
reforms and other means.
It is projected to center on five aspects of growth that APEC plans to achieve,
namely ''balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure'' growth, and
the forum is expected to report on its progress in achieving the strategy in
2015, officials said.
On the discussion of balanced growth, some leaders called for the need to
discuss currency issues, such as with regard to more flexibility, according to
a Japanese government official.
Besides the growth strategy, the key focus of the summit meeting is how the
forum will try to realize the so-called Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, an
idea that has otherwise been considered a vague concept. The leaders are
expected to cite a U.S.-backed free trade initiative as one of the pathways
toward that end.
Kan is expected to explain to fellow leaders on Sunday about Tokyo's interest
in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, initiative, which would encompass two
of the world's three largest economies if Japan joins it.
At a gathering of APEC business leaders prior to the summit, Kan indicated his
eagerness to join the ongoing TPP negotiations, saying that Japan has ''now
decided to widely open up again,'' referring to the past opening of the country
in the 19th century from over 200 years of self-imposed isolation.
To create the envisaged APEC-wide free trade area, dubbed the FTAAP, the
leaders' declaration is expected to say that it would be pursued by
''developing and building on ongoing regional undertakings'' such as the TPP
and the ASEAN plus three grouping.
China is known to prefer the ASEAN plus three, which groups Japan, China, South
Korea and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, while the
United States is promoting the TPP as the potential core for creating an FTAAP.
The TPP originated in a tiny regional free trade agreement among Brunei, Chile,
New Zealand and Singapore, but negotiations to expand it began this year and
now involve five other APEC countries -- the United States, Australia, Peru,
Malaysia and Vietnam.
Eager not to miss out on the rapid development of the TPP, which could become a
rulemaking instrument on trade and investment for the whole region, Japan
decided earlier this week to start consultations with the TPP negotiating
members.
But concerns remain in the country about drastically opening up its heavily
protected agricultural market, as the TPP is pursuing a free trade agreement
that would require member economies to basically reduce all tariffs to zero.
Set up in 1989, APEC accounts for 52.7 percent of the world's gross domestic
product and 44.4 percent of global trade by value, according to the Japanese
government. It operates on the basis of nonbinding commitments.
It groups 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.
Its next rotating chair for 2011 is the United States.
==Kyodo
2010-11-13 23:50:27