Advisers blow their trumpet

By Yoke Har Lee

Apec's business advisers are confident they have already achieved at least one of their goals from this weekend's summit.

Trade ministers have signed an agreement to stop export subsidies on farm products, though it has yet to be ratified by the leaders' meetings and published in the official communique on Monday.

The chairman of the Apec Business Advisory Council, Philip Burdon, said the private sector had set the scene for the achievement.

"We have [Trade Minister] Lockwood Smith already foreshadowing the expectation of endorsing the abolition of subsidies - non-discrimination in agriculture trade."

The genesis for this had been provided by the council, said Mr Burdon.

"The official process has been now able to pick up and endorse our work programme."

The council was also optimistic that other elements of the food system it had been proposing would be endorsed by the leaders.

While Mr Burdon would not be specific on which of the council's recommendations might be accepted by the official Apec process, he said: "The expectations are always going to exceed the reality. But I would hope that we would see a significant endorsement of the Abac ambition in the leaders declaration. We clearly are optimistic that we are going to see progress made in those key areas that we have set."

The business advisory council comprises private sector representatives appointed by the Government to provide input to Apec.

The council's members were unimpressed with the progress made in persuading Apec economies to strengthen financial markets, particularly in the areas of transparency and corporate governance.

Failure to achieve this would impact on the core ability of economies to adopt the sort of ambitions the advisory council wanted to push through, said Mr Burdon.

The council also wanted Apec members to be more sincere about plans to liberalise their markets. They should provide specific road maps showing how they planned to reach that goal under what are called their individual action plans.

"We have expressed the concern the road maps are not sufficiently clear on how these [free trade objectives] are going to be achieved."