APEC Urges Move Towards Asia-Pacific FTA

Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, at their meeting later this month, are being advised by the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) to accelerate the process towards making the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) a reality.

ABAC is looking for APEC to take "concrete steps" towards establishing the FTAAP, ten years after a vision for it was first presented by ABAC to APEC Leaders in Chile. Subsequently, in 2010 in Japan, and then again in Bali in 2013, APEC Leaders confirmed that the FTAAP should be developed and built on the ongoing talks within the Asia-Pacific on regional and bilateral free trade agreements.

It has been suggested that pathways to the FTAAP could include an amalgamation, in some way, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community, the Pacific Alliance, the proposed expansion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between ASEAN and its six FTA partners. ABAC efforts have therefore been largely directed at ensuring that there is eventual convergence of these FTAAP pathways.

Tony Nowell, Chair of ABAC Regional Integration Working Group, summed up ABAC's expectations, by saying that, "in order to achieve regional economic integration, we need the Bogor Goals (of free and open trade and investment by 2020) to be achieved; to achieve the Bogor Goals we need FTAAP and to achieve FTAAP we need one or more of the negotiating pathways to be successfully completed."

ABAC noted that "the TPP is close to completion, but needs further political direction if momentum is to be maintained," and it sees the RCEP "as needing to adopt a quicker pace and level of ambitions that would increase alignment with other pathways to FTAAP." However, ABAC also confirmed that it believes that an FTAAP "should converge around the highest standards from each of the pathways."

"Given these developments and the approaching 2020 deadline for achieving the Bogor Goals, ABAC now sees the need for APEC to provide more 'top-down' direction in the FTAAP process," said Ning Gaoning, ABAC Chair 2014. "We would therefore welcome concrete steps by APEC to the realization of an FTAAP, such as developing a feasibility study, road map and timeline."

Source: Tax News