APEC FTA plan gets cautious welcome

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum ministers tackled the issue for the first time since Washington made the proposal at the Hanoi APEC summit last year, Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Mitsuo Sakaba said.

The dream of a single free-trade area within APEC was “basically a kind of long-term objective,” he said after the meeting ahead of this year’s summit in Sydney at the weekend.

Japanese ministers who attended the meeting had remarked that “further studies should be made” over some aspects, including regional competitiveness, capacity-building and structural reform.

The Japanese ministers also “stressed the importance that APEC should continue to work on a sector-by-sector basis as we have been doing before engaging in full-fledged region-wide negotiations.”

They cited various bilateral free-trade deals being negotiated between APEC members as useful blueprints for any region-wide free trade deal, he added.

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Edsel Custodio said that when Washington made the proposal it was the other members’ understanding that it would be a “long-term process” and did not mean they would have to negotiate immediately.

China also objected to wording in the report that appeared to suggest a timetable for negotiations, said Philippine trade negotiator Jose Antonio Buencamino.

Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu told AFP later the same issues that bogged down global trade talks could hobble negotiations for the proposed Asia Pacific-wide free trade zone.

However, she said her country supported exploring the feasibility of a giant Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), stretching from China to Chile, as a long-term prospect.

A report to be submitted to the summit will recommend that preparatory studies be carried out on the FTAAP, amid an impasse in the global trade talks.

“We think it’s a fine idea to be studied and evaluated as a long-term goal but we don’t think it is something we are ready to do as APEC right now,” Pangestu said.

She said the priority for APEC, which groups 19 nations plus Hong Kong and Taiwan, was to ensure a successful outcome of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks.

WTO envoys are meeting in Geneva over the next three weeks in a bid to break the long-standing deadlock in the negotiations on cutting tariffs and subsidies, which were launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, Doha.

WTO members are at odds over the extent of new cuts in barriers to trade in agriculture, industrial goods and services amid cross-cutting disagreements between rich and poor countries over the concessions they need to make.

Pangestu said APEC economies also varied in levels of economic development and if the group decided to negotiate a free trade deal it could be faced with the same obstacles which had stalled global trade talks.

“Whatever is getting us stuck in the multilateral negotiations are also going to appear in this (FTAAP). I don’t think we are optimistic that we can resolve those issues under a regional agreement.”

Australian Trade Minister Warren Truss called for the report to be redrafted to incorporate the ministers’ comments and discussed again at the next ministerial meeting Thursday, Sakaba said.

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