Materializing Busan Roadmap: New Proposals for Trade Facilitation and Capacity Building

1. Materializing Busan Roadmap: New Proposals for Trade Facilitation and Capacity Building Dr. David HongExecutive DirectorChinese Taipei APEC Study Center

2. Focus of Presentation • Offer suggestions for APEC’s work in trade facilitation & capacity building.

3. Rationale of Busan Roadmap • APEC developed the Busan Roadmap as part of the review of APEC’s progress called the “2005 Mid-Term Stocktake.” • Busan Roadmap provides future direction for APEC to achieve Bogor Goals.

4. Major Parts of Busan Roadmap The Busan Roadmap consists of the following parts: • A. Support for the Multilateral Trading System • B. Strengthening Collective and Individual Actions • C. Promotion of High-Quality RTAs/FTAs • D. Busan Business Agenda • E. A Strategic Approach to Capacity Building • F. The Pathfinder Approach

5. Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building in Busan Roadmap • The Busan Business Agenda: State that trade facilitation is crucial for promoting economic progress. APEC must create a business facilitation program. • A Strategic Approach to Capacity Building: Relate that APEC recognizes the significance of capacity building effort. • Essentially, APEC must promote trade facilitation & capacity building.

6. How can APEC enhance trade facilitation & capacity building? I will now identify them. Please see my paper for detailed analysis.

7. Suggestions for Trade Facilitation • First, APEC could create the Trade Facilitation Task Force to manage APEC’s work in trade facilitation, so as to improve coordination and efficiency. • Second, APEC could assist WTO in trade facilitation through identifying major issues and developing an agreement.

8. Suggestions for Trade Facilitation • Third, APEC could ensure that recommendations from the private sector in trade facilitation are implemented, so as to show that “APEC means business.” • Fourth, APEC could identify and provide the capacity building needs of APEC economies when implementing trade facilitation actions for enhancing successful implementation process.

9. Suggestions for Capacity Building • First, APEC could promote the idea that all APEC economies may need capacity building and not just developing members. The reason is that all economies are striving for economic development. • Second, APEC could provide more funding for capacity building/ECOTECH when work on trade and investment liberalization and facilitation (TILF) shows progress.

10. Suggestions for Capacity Building • Third, APEC could cooperate with international financial institutions (IFIs) such as World Bank and ADB on capacity building projects.

11. Suggestions Applicable to Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building • First, APEC could focus on implementing actions that maximize benefit to APEC members. This means a ranking system could be developed, so as to assist with the selection of actions. • Second, APEC could develop criteria for admission of new APEC members in 2007 that are based on APEC’s goals in trade facilitation & capacity building. The objective is to ensure that new APEC members could contribute to these two areas.

12. Suggestions Applicable to Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building • Third, APEC could allow greater participation of scholars in the APEC process. Scholars could provide significant amount of information and analyses. • Fourth, APEC could implement more actions that utilize the Pathfinder Approach. The Busan Roadmap has emphasized the Pathfinder Approach whereby a few APEC members could proceed to implement actions.

13. Conclusion • We can see that there exist many ideas for enhancing APEC’s work in trade facilitation and capacity building. • Our discussions here could serve as a major step for developing suggestions for APEC. • Finally, I welcome your comments and hope that we can come up with great suggestions.

14. Thank you!!