Full text of joint declaration issued by leaders of APEC at Singapore summit

SINGAPORE, Nov. 15 (Yonhap) -- The following is the full text of a declaration
issued Sunday by leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) at the
end of their two-day summit in Singapore.

"Sustaining Growth, Connecting the Region"

We, the leaders of APEC, gathered in Singapore and marked twenty years of
cooperation in promoting economic growth and prosperity for our people. In line with
new trends and emerging challenges, our agenda has grown in breadth, depth, and
complexity. But our common goal remains the same - to support growth and prosperity
in the Asia-Pacific region, through free and open trade and investment, as embedded
in the Bogor Goals.

A year ago, as the world descended into an economic crisis unprecedented in severity
since the Great Depression, we resolved that we would aim to overcome the crisis
within eighteen months. Today, our robust policy responses have helped to set the
stage for recovery. But economic recovery is not yet on a solid footing. Our
commitments to reject protectionism and keep our markets open and free have enabled
trade to be part of the solution rather than the problem. We will maintain our
economic stimulus policies until a durable economic recovery has clearly taken hold.


We will work together to strengthen the momentum towards strong, sustainable and
balanced global economic growth, as set out at the recent G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.

Looking beyond supporting the recovery, we recognize the necessity to develop a new
growth paradigm for the changed post-crisis landscape, and an expanded trade and
investment agenda that will strengthen regional economic integration (REI) in the
Asia-Pacific region. We cannot go back to "growth as usual." We will put in place
next year a comprehensive long-term growth strategy that supports more balanced
growth within and across economies, achieves greater inclusiveness in our societies,
sustains our environment, and which seeks to raise our growth potential through
innovation and a knowledge-based economy.

Supporting Balanced Growth

We support the goals of the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced
Growth. We join in their commitment to:

- Work together to ensure that our fiscal, monetary, trade and structural policies
are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced trajectories of
growth;

- Undertake macro prudential and regulatory policies to help prevent credit and
asset price cycles from becoming forces of destabilization; and

- Promote development and poverty reduction as part of the rebalancing of global
growth.

Structural reform will be critical to strengthening long-term potential output
growth and narrowing the development gap between economies, by improving economic
flexibility, fostering private demand, and developing financial markets. We agree to
reenergize APEC's work on structural reform, building on the Leaders' Agenda to
Implement Structural Reform towards 2010 (LAISR 2010).

We will leverage APEC's traditional strengths of voluntary cooperation, capacity
building, sharing of best practices, and working with the private sector, to
implement necessary reforms in infrastructure development, agriculture/food
management, social security, education and workforce training, and regulatory
frameworks. We will work with the international financial institutions and
multilateral development banks to facilitate these efforts. Given APEC's diversity,
these reforms must take into account individual economies' stage of development,
demographic trends, factor and institutional endowments, and comparative advantages.

Fostering Inclusive Growth

We resolve to ensure that future economic growth is more inclusive, to broaden
access to opportunities created by growth and to spread the benefits of growth more
widely. This will enable our economies to better seize the opportunities created by
globalization and to respond to its challenges. Inclusive growth will strengthen the
consensus for free and open trade and investment.

APEC's inclusive growth agenda will build on ongoing efforts on structural reform
under LAISR 2010 and will be driven by two key thrusts. First, we will undertake
structural adjustments that will enhance opportunities for all segments of our
societies to benefit from growth. Emphasis will be placed on the following specific
areas:

- We will support and develop our small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which account
for more than 90 percent of all businesses in the APEC region and employ between 50
and 80 percent of the workforce. We will assist SMEs to gain better access to global
markets, technology and finance as well as to improve their crisis management
capabilities.

- We will put job creation at the heart of our economic strategy and enhance
cooperation to address the social implications of globalization. We will facilitate
the retraining, skills upgrading and mobility of our workers so that they can secure
jobs, especially in new and growing industries.

- We will focus on enhancing women's access to education, training, financing,
technology, and infrastructure, to maximize their economic opportunities. We welcome
continued outreach to women entrepreneurs to grow the positive multiplier effect
that women's economic engagement can have on productivity and sustained growth.

Second, we will strengthen social resilience to help individuals overcome short-term
difficulties while providing the incentive for long-term effort, with a focus on the
most vulnerable in our economies.

- We will improve outcomes in education and skills-training to enhance long-term
economic security.

- We will consider income supplements or earned income tax credits that encourage
work and enterprise.

- We will design social safety nets that provide short-term economic security but
avoid long-term dependency.

We instruct our ministers and officials to further advance APEC's inclusive growth
agenda in 2010, and develop a multi-year program to build capacity for structural
reforms and SME development, employment creation, and the development of social
safety nets.

Promoting Sustainable Growth

We will ensure that economic growth in our region is consistent with sustainable
development. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the biggest global challenges.
It will impact each of our economies. We welcome the Declaration of the Leaders of
the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in L'Aquila and the Leaders'
Statement at the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit, and reaffirm our commitment to tackle the
threat of climate change and work towards an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen, within
the objective, provisions and principles of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will
need to be accompanied by measures, including financial assistance and technology
transfer to developing economies for their adaptation to the adverse impact of
climate change.

We recall our Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development
in Sydney in 2007, which set out an APEC-wide aspirational target of reducing energy
intensity by at least 25 percent by 2030. We applaud the efforts made by individual
APEC economies that have unilaterally undertaken measures to reduce emissions.
Sustainable forest management plays an important role in mitigating global
emissions. We will enhance work on meeting the aspirational goal in the Sydney
Declaration of increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares
of all types of forests by 2020. We support efforts in the UNFCCC negotiations to
agree on actions to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
(REDD) in developing economies. We recognize the role of the oceans in mitigating
climate change, and welcome the Manado Ocean Declaration.

Responding to climate change through transition to green economies also offers
opportunities. We will ensure that efforts to address climate change are consistent
with our international trade obligations. A key thrust in APEC's sustainable growth
agenda is the APEC Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) Work Program, under which
we will develop and implement a set of concrete actions to support sustainable
growth in the region, advance work to increase utilization and dissemination of EGS,
reduce existing barriers and refrain from introducing new barriers to trade and
investment in EGS, and enhance capabilities of economies to develop their EGS
sectors. We also commit to rationalize and phase out over the medium term fossil
fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, while recognizing the importance
of providing those in need with essential energy services. We will review progress
on this at our meeting in 2010. We also commit to take steps to facilitate the
diffusion of climate-friendly technologies, including through economic and technical
cooperation (ECOTECH) and capacity building activities.

We will advance work on sharing best practices in energy efficiency with a view to
deploying cleaner and more efficient technologies, and welcome the implementation of
the voluntary APEC Peer Review on Energy Efficiency. We recognize the role of
renewable energy in reducing emissions and encourage its development in the APEC
region. We will encourage publication on a regular basis, timely, accurate, and
complete data on oil production, consumption, refining and stock levels as
appropriate.

Resisting Protectionism

We firmly reject all forms of protectionism and reaffirm our commitment to keep
markets open and refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in
goods and services, and instruct our Ministers to continue to regularly review our
adherence to these commitments. These efforts reinforce the WTO's own monitoring
mechanism, and act as another bulwark against protectionist pressures by ensuring
transparency in the measures taken in response to the crisis

Supporting the Multilateral System

We strongly reaffirm that the most effective means of dealing with protectionist
pressures and delivering a global stimulus package to sustain and secure our
recovery is an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the Doha Development Agenda
(DDA) in 2010, based on the progress achieved to-date, including with regard to
modalities. It is important that the high-level political commitment to concluding
the Doha Round translates into substantive progress in the negotiations. We are
ready to exercise pragmatism and all possible flexibility and utilize all possible
avenues in order to accelerate the pace of negotiations to secure convergence on a
final package. We instruct our Ministers to work closely with the WTO
Director-General to evaluate, in specific terms, what needs to be done to bring the
DDA to a successful conclusion and to assess the situation no later than in early
2010.

Accelerating Regional Economic Integration

We reaffirm our commitment to the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment.
We direct Ministers and officials to report to us next year with a meaningful
assessment of the industrialized APEC economies' achievement of the Bogor Goals.

We will continue to explore building blocks towards a possible Free Trade Area of
the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) in the future. An analytical study by officials shows that
there are significant economic benefits from an FTAAP, as well as the challenges of
establishing such an agreement. We look forward to the progress update from
Ministers and officials next year on the outcomes of the exploration of a range of
possible pathways to achieve FTAAP.

We will accelerate our work to strengthen REI in the Asia-Pacific, taking a
comprehensive approach that focuses our work on trade liberalization "at the
border"; improving the business environment "behind the border"; and enhancing
supply chain connectivity "across the border".

- We instruct officials to intensify our work on initiatives to promote greater
convergences among economies in key areas of APEC's REI agenda, including in
services, the digital economy, investment, trade facilitation, rules of origin and
standards/technical barriers to trade.

- We welcome the participation of Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand,
Singapore, and the United States in a pathfinder initiative under which economies
will agree to practice self-certification of origin with FTA partners. This
initiative will facilitate trade by cutting the certification procedure down to a
single step and reducing processing time to just one day.

- We endorse the APEC Principles for Cross-Border Trade in Services and the APEC
Services Action Plan, which together will provide a foundation for APEC's future
work to promote services trade and build greater convergences among APEC economies
in their treatment of services.

- We aspire to achieve an APEC-wide improvement of 25 percent in five key areas of
doing business by 2015: Starting a Business, Getting Credit, Enforcing Contracts,
Trading Across Borders and Dealing with Permits, and a 5 percent improvement by
2011. We welcome the preparation of capacity building work programmes by champion
economies - United States; New Zealand; Japan; Korea; Hong Kong, China; and
Singapore - and encourage continuous and concerted efforts through the Ease of Doing
Business Action Plan to make it cheaper, faster and easier to do business in the
Asia-Pacific.

- We look forward to the progress stock-take in implementing the LAISR forward work
program in 2010, and instruct our Ministers and officials to strategize the next
phase of the LAISR, including in the context of supporting our new growth
strategies.

- We look towards the successful conclusion of APEC's second Trade Facilitation
Action Plan in 2010, and are pleased to note that APEC as a whole is on track to
reduce trade transaction costs by an additional 5 percent by 2010.

- We will develop common approaches towards well-functioning public-private
partnership (PPP) markets. We encourage officials to explore the feasibility of
utilizing PPPs for the upgrading of transport infrastructure that contributes to the
enhancement of supply chain connectivity in the region.

- We welcome the Supply Chain Connectivity Framework, which has identified eight
chokepoints in regional supply chains and suggested actions to address these
chokepoints. We welcome the commitment from Transport Ministers to achieve greater
seamlessness in our multi-modal transport networks and call for officials to
continue cohesive efforts towards improving supply chain connectivity.

- We welcome the work undertaken in identifying performance indicators for
Investment Facilitation Action Plan (IFAP) and look forward to the implementation of
the IFAP next year.

- We reaffirm our commitment to establishing effective, comprehensive and balanced
intellectual property (IP) systems. We will continue to promote greater
collaboration among our IP rights experts, APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC),
and enforcement authorities across the APEC region and recognize the importance of
capacity building. We welcome the progress made by economies in implementing the
APEC Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative as well as cooperation to improve
patent systems in the region.

- We encourage ongoing efforts towards using ICT to address socio-economic issues
and realizing APEC's goal of achieving universal access to broadband in all member
economies by 2015.

- We support the outcomes and recommendations of the APEC Trade Recovery Program
Pilot Exercise. We reaffirm the importance for our economies to implement
initiatives, such as communications mechanisms and other approaches to trade
recovery, to build trusted relationships and to recognize one another's Authorized
Economic Operator (AEO) programs in alignment with the World Customs Organization
(WCO) SAFE Framework of Standards.

Strengthening Economic and Technical Cooperation

Building capacity for reforms aimed at facilitating inclusive growth and REI remains
a key priority for APEC. We reaffirm our commitment to the Manila Framework, which
serves as the basis for the implementation of the ECOTECH activities outlined in the
Osaka Action Agenda. We recognize that capacity building needs evolve as priorities
shift to meet new challenges. Therefore, we welcome ongoing efforts to develop a
more strategic, goal-oriented and multi-year approach toward capacity building, and
to strengthen the prioritization and effective implementation of capacity building
activities across APEC fora. We welcome the establishment of the China APEC
Cooperation Fund which aims to facilitate and promote APEC ECOTECH cooperation.

Enhancing Human Security

We express our deepest condolences for the loss of life and destruction caused by
the devastating typhoons that hit China, Japan, the Philippines, Chinese Taipei and
Viet Nam, and the earthquakes and the recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia. We
reaffirm the importance of enhancing human security and reducing the threat of
disruptions to business and trade in sustaining economic growth and prosperity in
the Asia-Pacific region. We recognize the importance of building capacity to counter
terrorism and welcome APEC's work in areas such as trade security, aviation
security, anti-terrorist protection of energy infrastructure, countering terrorism
financing, fighting cyber-terrorism, protecting the food supply against terrorist
contamination and emergency preparedness.

Responding to food security challenges in the region is a major priority for APEC.
Food security, including access to reliable sources of nutritious, safe and
affordable food, remains a concern for many in the Asia-Pacific region and around
the world. We encourage continued cooperation with the private sector, academia, and
civil society to address food security and safe food supply challenges, including by
promoting sustainable agricultural production and rural development, and instruct
officials to undertake capacity building projects and other practical initiatives to
address food security, and report back to us next year on their progress. We support
the L'Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security.

We welcome the sharing of experiences in dealing with the double global impact of
the economic crisis and the Influenza Pandemic (H1N1) in 2009. We reaffirm our
commitment to build regional capacity for avian and other potential human influenza
pandemics and emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and
Tuberculosis. We will strengthen our health systems and cooperate to prevent and
control emerging infectious diseases in the world.

Fighting Corruption, Improving Governance and Transparency

Good governance, institutional integrity, and transparency in both the public and
private sectors have a critical impact on the smooth flow of trade and economic
activities and help to mitigate crime and corruption. We recognize the mutually
reinforcing relationship between good governance measures and anti-corruption
actions. We welcome the efforts of member economies and ABAC in these areas and
encourage public-private partnerships to further APEC efforts to enhance governance,
institutional integrity and combat corruption.

We welcome the efforts of ABAC and the business community to enhance governance and
encourage economies to work through public-private partnership to further APEC
efforts in this area.

We note the importance of international cooperation in combating and dismantling the
threat of cross-border criminal networks and its linkages with corruption nodes. We
encourage member economies, where applicable, to ratify the UN Convention against
Corruption and UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and take measures
to implement their provisions, in accordance with economies' legal frameworks.

Strengthening APEC

A revitalized APEC is crucial to meet the challenges of sustaining recovery and to
deal with the region's 21st century economic challenges. To do so, APEC economies
must forge a partnership of common interests to produce strong, balanced and
sustainable growth. The appointment of the Secretariat's first Executive Director
for a fixed term is an important first step to strengthen the capacity of the APEC
Secretariat to meet the growing demands of member economies and other key
stakeholders. We direct our Ministers and officials to accelerate efforts to develop
more responsive and effective mechanisms to ensure that APEC remains the premier
forum for regional economic cooperation.
(END)