APEC High Level Symposium on E-Commerce and 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum

Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and gentleman,

I am delighted to note that the High Level Symposium on E-Commerce and also the 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum have concluded successfully. These events provided valuable opportunities to exchange ideas and concepts, which will assist APEC Member Economies to create viable E-Commerce systems in the region.

Before going into detail on issues relating to E-commerce, I wish to highlight APEC's goals, work areas and specific actions to liberalize and facilitate trade and investment in the region Comprising 21 economies in the Asia-Pacific region, APEC was formed in 1989 with the aimof liberalizing trade and investment by the year 2010 for industrialized economies and the year 2020 for developing economies. In addition, from the long term perspective, we are aiming to establish a prosperous and secure economic community in the region.

To achieve these common goals, we confine our activities to specific areas and operate under unique principles. The first area of activity is trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. The second is economic and technical cooperation. We also work on the basis of guiding principles in APEC. The first principle is voluntarism. Instead of operating on binding principles we are operate on a voluntary basis. The second principle is flexibility.. Last, but not least, we work on the important principle of consensus.

Some of APEC's strengths have been mentioned by several speakers today and yesterday. APEC itself accounts for more than 60% of the combined GDP of the world. The total trade volume of the 21 Member Economies of APEC accounts for more than half of the world trade. This in itself demonstrates the strength of APEC. APEC's unique strength is the Leaders Meeting and various Ministers Meetings held every year. These high-level meeting provide clear direction and disciplines for us to move forward on our agenda.

In fact, we have made great progress in many areas in APEC since 1989. However, we are still confronted with significant challenges. These challenges are coming both from outside and inside APEC. One key challenge from outside the forum is the changing environment precipitated by the rapid process of globalization. This process has encouraged APEC economies to reduce trade and investment barriers in conjunction with "open regionalism". However, free trade agreements which are inherently discriminatory in nature have been proliferating in the region. The challenge is how APEC can accommodate the free trade agreements under the concept of the open regionalism.

A key challenge from inside APEC is some level of inefficiency throughout the APEC process. In fact, we have been making a lot of effort to improve our efficiency to reach our goals. To address this issue, the new agenda item of the APEC reform has been adopted.

Another significant challenge is APEC's evolving agenda. For most of APEC's history we have been concentrating only on a trade and investment-related agenda. However, recently we have witnessed new challenges such as health issues triggered by SARs and avian influenza. Anti-corruption issues have also become important. Trade and security issues have also become part of APEC's agenda since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

The role of information communication technology (ICT) has changed the work scope of APEC's activities in general. ICT has provided a great number of opportunities and also a significant number of challenges. In this sense, the role of e-Commerce and also the role of the ECSG, the Electronic Commerce Steering Group is becoming more important. We have to avoid the negative impact arising from ICT development and, at the same time, we have to promote the benefits that we can accrue from the globalization process.

In regard to e-commerce implementation, APEC has already set several targets. In the area of paperless trading for example, APEC aims to achieve its goals by 2005 for industrialized economies and 2010 for developing economies.

In 2001 in Shanghai, APEC Leaders agreed to reduce transaction costs by 5% by the year 2006. I think the role of e-commerce is crucial to achieve this goal. Of course, other relevant APEC fora have been doing a lot of work to achieve this target.

Turning to our discussions in the last two days, I think we have highlighted many issues which are primarily policy related issues, legal issues, technical issues and issues related to promotion of e-commerce. We have heard several case studies.

It is very important to harmonize or coordinate relevant policies and legal practices within APEC economies to create an environment conducive to e-commerce, which will, in turn, to accomplish trade facilitation. And the role of new technologies is getting increasingly important. Enhancing security networks is also increasingly important in paperless trading and cross-border transactions. We have also identified the means for the close collaboration among member economies in this region.

I also would like to highlight one of the issues we have to take seriously to resolve all these challenges. It is private-public partnership (PPP). The importance of the private-public partnership has been emphasised by many speakers yesterday and today. We have identified the role to be played by the public sector and also the role to be played by business or private sector.

I think dialogues between the public and private sectors are very important and to institutionalize these dialogues also is very important. In that sense, efficient networking among relevant stakeholders is increasingly important.

Since APEC is not a binding process, we can improve our working modality primarily through peer pressure among member economies. We are operating on the basis of voluntarism and therefore, the best way we can do this is to benchmark the best practices of our colleagues our member economies. We can also put pressure on member economies to improve their practices or to discourage the bad practices.

I think that suggestions on pathfinder initiatives by PAA look relevant. The pathfinder itself is one of the APEC inventions to carry forward the common actions that at this stage we could not have the full participation of all members.

With that I would like to conclude my remarks, I am very happy to note that the combined fora have been successfully produced many productive recommendations and suggestions. I am confident that these recommendations will contribute substantially to the advancement of the work of the Electronic Commerce Steering Group and APEC's goals in general.

Even though we have heard a lot of different views on many subjects and issues yesterday and today, I think there is one consensus in this room and that is that we are very much thankful to the organizers of this important meeting, and particularly the people and the municipal government of Yantai and Shandong Province, who have provided excellent facilities for this events. We have also enjoyed the hospitality of the people of Yantai and Shandong Province.

I would like to express my thanks to the members of the Organizing Committee of this event, have been working on this important event for several months. Thanks also to the interpreters who have worked very hard for the past two days. They have done a very good job.

Thank you very much.