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The important issues for all the economies in Asia-Pacific region now are structural reform and infrastructure, Professor Andrew MacIntyre, dean of the College of Asia & the Pacific at Australian National University (ANU), said in a recent interview with Asia Pacific Daily.
As an expert of the Asia-Pacific region, Professor MacIntyre shared his opinions on the issues of APEC and the Asia- Pacific region as the 2013 APEC leaders’ meeting to be held in early October in Bali, Indonesia is drawing near.
He noted that APEC is also facing some challenges. “It’s difficult to advance trade cooperation in an environment where global trade negotiations have completely stalled. Major member economies will be reluctant to make significant binding commitments locally in advance of knowing globally where negotiations are going, he said.
In addition to the tough challenges facing global negotiations, APEC also faces the emergence of the G20, which includes all the major Asian member economies, plus the emergence of the East Asia summit which has all the significant players across the Asia and the Pacific region. There seems a bit of competition in this region, the Professor said.
However, APEC will continue to function, will continue to play a useful role for some time yet. “Because no country finds all of its diplomatic priorities satisfied in any one of the existing large multilateral frameworks, he said.
On the common goals of the Bogor deceleration in 1994 APEC, he said that the member economies, which agreed to pursue the target of free and open trade and investment by 2010 for industrialized economies and 2020 for developing economics, haven’t been successful.
Although the Australian government indicated that APEC’s overall process has not been uniformly impressive across all sectors, MacIntyre said that doesn’t mean there has been no progress on that.
“You could look at the exceptions or you could look at the wider pattern. For the advanced economies tariff barriers are quite low now. Quantitative restrictions are nothing like the area that they were previously, he added.
The important issues for all the economies in the region now are structural reform and infrastructure, the professor noted.
“We need to get reform and regulatory frameworks of many member economies around the region so that investors will have greater confidence to put money into infrastructure. Right now, in many member economies in this region there is a pent up demand for infrastructure. It hasn’t been happening because investors haven’t felt comfortable about putting capital in, he said.
“Reforming the regulatory arrangements will help a lot there. China will have a very big interest in this, because China is potentially a very large provider of infrastructure around the region, he added.
Although there are some multilateral frameworks in the region, Professor MacIntyre said strategic rivalry among various member economies still complicates the situation.
“The challenge for all the leaders in the region is to make sure that strategic rivalries do not become too strong or sharp that they limit our ability to pursue sensible economic cooperation that brings all the economies of the region together, he added.
