APEC: Opportunities and Challenges for the Peruvian Business Sector

Last November in Malaysia, at the 10th Annual Ministerial Meeting Peru with Russia and Vietnam, became a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. It is now a grouping of 21 Asia-Pacific economies committed to economic cooperation together to raise living standards in the region and build an Asia-Pacific community. Meeting as "economies", APEC membership includes Taiwan as Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong, China. Two major regional/global economies whose full participation enhances regional cooperation in Asia-Pacific. APEC economies together are a major force in the world economy.

The most important meeting in Malaysia was the Economic Leaders summit, attended by President Fujimori, his colleagues from Chile and Mexico, Korea, President Jiang Ze Min of China, Prime Minister Obuchi of Japan, Leaders of South East Asia states, Australia, Russia and others including New Zealand, my own country. New Zealand is this year's host and chair of APEC following Malaysia in 1998.

Leaders set ambitious goals and a substantial agenda for APEC work this year: in particular a range of very specific initiatives and measures to deal with the financial crisis including its social impacts, also to promote trade and investment liberalisation, make it easier to do business in the region, promote E-Commerce, strengthen science and technology industry cooperation, integrate women in APEC, foster SME development and Human Resources capacity building and skills development. The Committee on Trade and Investment, specialist working groups and the Finance Ministers process and other fora will work on leaders instructions during 1999.

In Malaysia, Leaders also met with senior business, private sector representation from member economies, three from each making up the APEC Business Advisory Council, ABAC. This is a grouping that Leaders have appointed to advise them on initiatives and measures that will facilitate trade, develop markets and thus contribute to soundly based economic growth in an interdependent regional and global economy.

The extent of APEC activities and relations with business go much further than ABAC. Our purpose at this conference is to give some indications of APEC-business links and the interest or opportunities they may offer to Peru's business community.

Business facilitation is one of the main areas, one of the "three pillars" of APEC cooperation. The others are trade and investment liberalisation and economic and technical cooperation or "Ecotech".

Ecotech projects seek to reduce economic disparities among member economies and to enable all, particularly developing members, to benefit more fully from trade liberalisation. They cover training and sharing of information experience and expertise among member economies in specialised areas. The aim is to fully develop regional human resources: capacity building. I am convinced there will be value for Peru in participating fully in APEC ecotech activities and projects.

I also note that unlike many international groupings, APEC is very open to the private/business sector. Links and dialogue are very extensive. Many working groups - Infrastructure Development, Telecommunications, E-Commerce, Energy, Tourism and others - include business people or business group representatives in their consultations or have special dialogues with them.

I am glad to share the floor with a Secretariat colleague, Jaime Pomareda, whose secondment by your Government has added real strength to the Secretariat. I am confident his insights will also assist your government and business to get maximum value from APEC participation. He will speak on some specific aspects of APEC work of special relevance to business.

But first may I explain briefly about the Secretariat of which I am current Executive Director. In that capacity, I am honoured to be the first official APEC visitor to Peru since you became a full member. The hospitality has been generous and I have had valuable opportunities to learn your Government's perspectives and interests in APEC. My position will be taken by a senior Bruneian diplomat next year, when Brunei Darussalam assumes the Chair and host for APEC. I have 22 colleagues including Jaime seconded from 17 member economies and we are based in Singapore.

When APEC was established in 1989 with 11 members it was as an informal consultative process. We rejected organisational models from outside the region. We decided against setting up any Secretariat. No to an international bureaucracy like the UN, no to a dominant think tank. APEC activities were to be initiated and managed by APEC member economies themselves.

But these activities expanded very fast. Members found the opportunity of APEC to work together increasingly valuable. New members joined. With the growth in number and diversity of activities, Ministers decided to set up a small central Secretariat to support and coordinate activities and manage technical cooperation and other finances.

Singapore's offer to host the Secretariat was accepted; they pay the rent on our 3 floors and have plans to build a permanent HQ building. There were 14 staff initially seconded by member economies, now 23 plus locally recruited support staff.

What does the Secretariat produce? Secretariat support for APEC working group and other fora meetings. Each secondee is responsible for one or more tof these fora as well as other duties. There were some 225 meetings of 26 main fora last year. We also coordinate between them. Meetings are held throughout the APEC region. I am going to attend a meeting of the HRD Working Group in Santiago next week.

APEC is managed through the year by senior officials, chaired by the host economy this year New Zealand (Output II). We draft many of the studies and position papers for them.

This Output III relates to financial management of the $4 million or so in Ecotech project funds. At present there are about 270 projects in progress. We are also responsible for evaluation of the results of these projects - to check they give value for money.

Output IV - Public Affairs and information on APEC - is quite an important area: speeches, media and public briefings, a range of publications on APEC activities, most available by free download from our website. I strongly recommend you visit it. There is a business section. The central site receives over 300,000 hits or requests a month, 100 plus megabytes or 2000 pages of information downloaded per day.

Before I pass the microphone to Jaime, I want to highlight some key features of APEC. It is important background, I think, to know how it operates.

I also want to comment on the trade liberalisation process in APEC, year to year, working towards the Bogor goals of free trade and investment by 2010/2020.

This is carried forward in a frameword agreed by Leaders in Osaka in 1992. The framework is of common action plans of joint initiatives and also voluntary commitments under Individual Action Plans. These are updated annually as progress is recorded. IAPs are a key feature of APEC.

Here is a sample. Peru is now part of this process of common economic cooperation and other member economies look forward to Peru's full participation it will add strength to APEC and I am confident support your own efforts to increase living standards.