Besides open markets, just a cheaper, easier way to do business
By
Jeremy Au Yong
LIMA: Free trade and the Doha round of global trade talks may be the big issues at the current Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, but business leaders here have rather more down-to-earth concerns.
As the Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac) meetings wound up last Saturday, trade finance, ease of credit and the cost of doing business were issues which received an airing.
The business leaders were invited to share their thoughts with the leaders of the Apec economies at a closed-door dialogue.
Earlier, they had released a 52-page report on their findings.
In it, they reaffirmed calls for keeping markets open and welcomed the leaders' decision to put the possibility of an Asia-Pacific wide free-trade area on the table.
Still, a large chunk of the document was devoted to talk of simply making it cheaper and easier to do business.
Among the things they wanted to see was a 5per cent reduction in transaction costs, although they pointed out that that did not necessarily mean tariff cuts.
Simply having good ports and roads can save time and money, for example.
Along the same lines was a call for more countries to recognise the Apec Business Travel Card, which gives businessmen faster clearance through immigration.
Help for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) was also sought.
'SMEs in every economy are major employers and we want to make sure they are kept alive and will be able to continue to grow,' said Ascendas chief Chong Siak Ching in an earlier interview with Singapore media. The Singaporean will chair next year's Apec CEO Summit.
Abac's business-centric agenda is often seen as running ahead of the Apec agenda as it does not factor in political concerns.
And it is set to move even faster as the next three chairmen will adopt a common, rolling set of objectives.
'It will be a collaborative effort between Singapore, Japan and the United States to push the business agenda within the Apec region,' said incoming Abac chairman Teng Theng Dar.
Mr Teng, who is chief executive officer of the Singapore Business Federation, is in Peru with the 14-strong Singapore business delegation, which includes representatives from companies such as SembCorp, PSA International and Singapore Airlines.
The economic crisis seems to have narrowed the gap between Abac and Apec. Many at the summit say that the way out of the crisis requires private and public sectors to work more closely together.
Academic Vinod Aggarwal, for instance, argued for more involvement from businesses in free-trade agreements.
The current top-down way of negotiating FTAs, he said, tends to produce agreements so convoluted that businesses prefer to simply pay the tariffs than try to comply with the rules.
A day earlier, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, a former investment banker, had stressed that businesses were key to getting out of the economic crunch.
'The strength of Apec is the willingness to engage politics and business,' he said.
'Without business on board driving the change and improvement, the drive towards global economic strength will fail.'
