Apec will be left looking for a role

By Rod Oram

Between the lines

If you wonder what use Apec is to us and the rest of the Asia Pacific region, consider the cautious words of Graeme Ludlow, the retiring head of New Zealand's Customs Service.

He has spent years cutting through thickets of red tape ensnaring our international trade. Each small step lowers the cost and increases the security of trade and helps generate economic activity.

He believes Apec is a useful forum for achieving trade simplification across the 21 member economies but he knows the work is painfully slow.

"All I can say is 'have patience'," he said in a Business Herald article yesterday. All this might seem insignificant in the context of the huge cavalcade of Apec leaders and their retinues which will engulf Auckland in eight weeks' time.

The leaders will once again trumpet their "triumphs" on high profile issues, particularly their efforts to cut tariffs. But their ambitions are misplaced. For the next five years or so, the forum for trade liberalisation is no longer Apec but the next round of negotiations under the World Trade Organisation.

Deferring to the WTO on freer trade, Apec will be left searching for a new reason for existing. It is actually rather good at finding them. Its 10 annual summits to date have come up with some stirring proclamations: Canberra's Eight General Principles in 1989, the Seattle Vision of 1993, the Bogor Declaration of 1994 and the Osaka Action Plan of 1995 are all classics.

Trouble is, Apec is very bad at turning rhetoric into reality. Each new initiative has spawned scores of work groups, expert groups, meetings and all the other paraphernalia of international summitry.

Fair enough that it wants to study a problem before tackling it, but the first work groups are now nine years old with little to show for their efforts.

That's a great shame because there is huge scope for this work, known as economic and technological cooperation, or ecotech in Apec-speak.

Extensive ecotech collaboration between Apec economies would make them stronger and more developed, generating far bigger benefits than free trade on its own. Indeed, the Asia crisis showed what damage free-flowing trade and capital can do to ill-prepared economies.

But ecotech is bogged down in Apec's bureaucratic morass. It will only break free if Apec leaders give it at least equal, if not greater, priority than free trade.

Chances of such a major re-assessment of Apec's goals are slim indeed in the eight weeks left until the summit. If New Zealand, as chair, were to pull it off, the Auckland Declaration would be more worthwhile than its precursors.

It would give Apec a real job to do, one which would deliver tangible benefits to member economies, earning Apec the public support and respect it craves, but lacks.