Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group - The APEC Ministerial
and Leaders Meetings in Brunei, 12-16 November, 2000
Contents
Introduction
APEC as an organisation
Member
Economies of APEC (with date of joining)
Evolution of APEC
November 2000
Meetings in Brunei
Further material
Introduction
This brief provides an introduction to APEC's meetings
in Brunei in November 2000 along with links to documents and sites on
the Internet about APEC.
APEC as an organisation
APEC is the acronym for the regional grouping Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (which Gareth Evans famously called
"four adjectives in search of a noun"). The organisation has a small
headquarters in Singapore, which operates the official
APEC website). The 21 member economies (this is the official term
for members, rather than the more political term, given the inclusion
of Taiwan and Hong Kong, SAR) are located around the Pacific, and span
an enormous diversity in terms of size, level of development, political
structure and cultural background. What they do share is, apart from a
form of geographic
proximity, is an interest in enhancing, by various means, the growing
interdependence of the region (see APEC's website for more details of
its objectives).
The principal emphasis for this enhancement has been
in the area of trade, although this is not the only area of APEC's interest.
However it must be acknowledged that trade had much to do with the establishment
of APEC. For example during the lengthy Uruguay Round trade negotiations
(1986 - 1994), a number of member economies saw the establishment of APEC
as a useful device to further progress in the global trade discussions
(for a discussion of some of the reasons for this see IRS Current Issues
Brief by Bruce Donald, The
WTO Seattle Ministerial Conference, December 1999).
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Member
Economies of APEC (with date of joining)
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- Russian Federation (1998)
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Evolution of APEC
Major milestones in APEC's evolution have included:
- Established in November 1989, at a meeting in Canberra
- Purpose is to promote multilateral economic cooperation on issues
of trade and investment
- Ministerial
meetings are held annually (for a variety, and increasing number,
of ministers).
- 1991 Seoul Declaration (setting out objectives)
- Meetings
of Economic Leaders (ie National Leaders) have been held annually
since 1993, at Seattle 1993, Bogor, Indonesia 1994, Osaka 1995, Subic
Bay, Philippines 1996, Vancouver, 1997, Kuala Lumpur 1998, Auckland,
1999.
- 1994 Bogor
Meeting and Declaration of Common Resolve committed member economies
to free and open trade and investment, with the industrialized economies
achieving the goal of free and open trade and investment no later than
the year 2010 and developing economies no later than the year 2020.
- 1995
Osaka Action Agenda - a blueprint for translating vision into reality
- 1996 Manila Action Plan including Individual Action Plans (IAPs) adopted.
IAPs list specific steps taken by the Member Economy to reach the goals
of the Bogor Declaration. IAPs
for each Member Economy are made public at the APEC website. For
more details of the implications of the Subic Bay Meeting see IRS Current
Issues Brief by Tas Luttrell, APEC
After Subic Bay-the Road to Free Trade.
- 1997 Vancouver Leader's Meeting Statement on Infrastructure Development.
The Leaders Meeting in Vancouver APEC agreed to admit Russia, Vietnam
and Peru as members, as well as adopting a moratorium on new members
for ten years.
- 1998 Kuala Lumpur Meeting discussed the implications of the Asian
financial crisis. For more details see IRS Current Issues Brief by Frank
Frost, APEC's
Kuala Lumpur Meetings, 1998.
November 2000 Meetings
in Brunei
The November series of meetings of APEC: ministers, leaders,
officials, business leaders etc are being held in Bandar Seri Begawan,
Brunei Darrusalam. There is some pressure on the leaders to achieve important
results given a widespread perception that APEC is past its peak, although
there seems to be little consensus on what strategies should be used to
do this.
The first important precursor to these meetings was the
meeting of the Ministers responsible for Trade, held in Darwin in June
2000. The Australian Trade Minister, Mr Vaile, hosted the meeting, and
official announcements on the progress made there are available at the
Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade website. The meeting was also attended by
the Director-General of the WTO, Mike Moore, which can be regarded as
an indication of the continuing importance of the institution to global
trade negotiations.
The Finance
Ministers held their most recent meeting in Bandar Seri Begawan in
September 2000, and urged the implementation of the Voluntary Action Plan
for Promoting Freer and More Stable Capital Flows. This contains a number
of measures designed to reduce some of the systemic problems highlighted
by the Asian financial crisis.
The APEC Business Advisory Council
(ABAC, a permanent private sector body established to advise Leaders on
issues of importance to business in the region) will also meet (for the
4th time in 2000) in Bandar Seri Begawan from 12-16 November.
ABAC has recently released a report urging greater attention to reform
of the financial sector and to the growth of non-tariff trade restrictions
(see "APEC
urged to reform financial sector", Australian Financial Review,
27/10/00, p. 28).
The Economic Leaders
meeting (ie heads of Government) will be held in Bandar Seri Begawan
on 12-13 November. The theme of the meeting is to be Delivering
to the Community, which is to show the continuing relevance of the
APEC process to the people of the Asia-Pacific region.
It is expected that President Clinton will attend this
year's Leaders Meeting,
(see related Press Briefing). Secretary of State Albright will also
attend the Brunei meetings, although she will miss the Ministerial Meeting
due to commitments related to the Middle East peace process.
Further material
For further information on APEC see the following sites:
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/trade/canada-apec/history-e.asp
Introduction to APEC from a Canadian Government perspective
http://ajrcnet.anu.edu.au
The ANU's Australia-Japan Research Centre that coordinates many projects
related to APEC
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/apec/papers/curtis.html
A paper titled "APEC after 10 Years: Performance and Prospects"
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/apec/papers/woo.html
A paper titled "APEC After 10 Years: What’s Left of 'Open Regionalism'?"
http://ncds.anu.edu.au/online/conference/cf97-3.htm
A paper on the APEC approach to trade liberalisation commitments
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ausapec/isspaps.htm
Papers about APEC from the Australian APEC Study Centre, Monash University
http://www.toda.org/conferences/hugg_hon/hugg_hon_papers/w_qian.html
An analysis of APEC and the APEC approach, from a Chinese perspective
This page was written by Bruce Donald and Maria Lalic.
Last reviewed 10 November 2000.
Any comments to: Bruce.Donald@aph.gov.au
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