Globalisation the key as economies cross borders

A specialist in trend-spotting finds the signs are looking good for Apec economies, reports YOKE HAR LEE.

In another age, the grounding of master trend-spotter John Naisbitt's plane by a storm would have been a disappointment to those gathered to hear him speak in Auckland on Saturday.

But in a demonstration of the way technology has broken down barriers, Mr Naisbitt made his presentation to the Apec Business Symposium at the Aotea Centre via satellite from Boston.

Mr Naisbitt, who has built a career out of trend-spotting, said Apec economies were extremely well-positioned to create prosperity for the region's people.

From mega-trends to micro case studies of why small businesses have a place in global economies, and the impact of technology on our lives, the symposium brought home the message that globalisation is here to stay.

The chairman of Industrial Research, David Bone, told the symposium that while technology was neutral, how economies chose to apply it made the difference.

Chilean speaker Hernan Buchi, a business consultant, said measuring the well-being of societies after fiscal reforms and the opening of markets would always be subjective.

Inadequate as it might be, using gross domestic product as a benchmark would make a case for market reforms and the opening of national borders, he said.

In Chile, which was one of Latin America's market reform success stories, the mortality rate had fallen and access to good water supplies had improved.

Basic education was now available to even the poorest families, instead of just 40 per cent of people. Those were tangible benefits of reforms, Mr Buchi said.

A Thai delegate said there would be losers in the race up the global social and economic ladder, and there should be mechanisms to address the social tensions that resulted from economies being left behind in a competitive world.

Former New Zealand cabinet minister Philip Burdon, chairman of Apec's Business Advisory Council, which was set up to channel business views to the Government, said Apec remained the best means of helping the greatest number of economies to reach the goal of improving material wealth, if nothing else.

"Free trade is not a panacea to all the world's problems. But the material achievements of free trade are remarkable and it is one of the most successful ways of improving an economy's material wealth," he said.

Mr Buchi said his challenge to Apec Governments was that they should create conditions in their domestic environments so that when reforms opened markets, "the best can come out and not the worst."

Governments, he said, needed to be aware of how societies could organise themselves, as a result of the new order, to live peacefully and create wealth in the manner they prefered.

But no example could better illustrate the problem Apec Governments face in reconciling tensions between maintaining the status quo or moving to open up politically sensitive markets than the dairy industry.

Nigel Mitchell, the New Zealand Dairy Board's manager for external policy, said Apec's ambitions were quite different from political realities.

If there was one message that the symposium participants took home it was to prepare for more changes about to sweep the world.

There might be hiccups in the way economies viewed free trade, but longer term, free markets would prevail, thanks in part to developments in technology.

National borders meant little when e-commerce dominated international trade, delegates heard.

National borders already do not mean much for the aviation industry, where businesses are well ahead of Governments in pursuing growth.

This was demonstrated in a case study on the formation of the Star alliance, presented by Cyril Murphy, vice-president of United Airlines' international network department.

The virtue in being small was also shown in the study of a small company, PEC New Zealand, which partnered Unisys, a global player in the IT industry, through determination and planning.

Glenys Coughlan, head of the Tourism Industry Association of New Zealand, said cybercafes had implications for the industry because backpackers used e-mail to tip off other backpackers about poor service.

The symposium, organised by the New Zealand Trade Development Board, brought the messages closer to home: consumers want choice but producers want protection; businessmen want free competition but Governments have to win elections.