Philippines says poor APEC members cautious on trade
ABS-CBN (Manila) | 26 June 2007
Philippines says poor APEC members cautious on trade
Developing economies within APEC were lukewarm to moves by wealthier members to use the annual forum to hammer out a free-trade area, a senior Philippine diplomat said on Monday.
Edsel Custodio, the foreign ministry’s undersecretary for international economic affairs, said the Philippines was only supporting proposals for a regional economic integration plan instead of a free-trade deal.
"We have some concerns about turning APEC into a negotiating forum and coming up with a free-trade area," Custodio said before leaving for the Australian city of Cairns to attend preparatory meetings for the annual APEC leaders’ summit in Sydney in September.
"I don’t think it’s appropriate to turn APEC into a negotiation forum."
Custodio said more advanced economies pushing for free-trade talks within APEC would encounter problems, citing the difficulty of getting Taiwan and China to negotiate, given that Beijing views the island as part of China.
"Can we really negotiate considering the type of members that we have? Can they be participants in the negotiating process which involves certain sovereignty issues?
Under a 1994 declaration, APEC has a target of free trade among its developed economies by 2010 and among its developing economies by 2020.
The United States, Australia and Canada will be pushing for a free-trade area in the Asia-Pacific when trade ministers meet in Cairns next month.
The campaign for a free-trade deal in the region was expected to intensify after U.S., European, Brazilian and Indian negotiators recently abandoned talks in the troubled Doha round of world trade talks, Custodio added.
APEC groups 21 economies Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, the United States and Vietnam. - Reuters
