November 11, 2011
ABAC Calls for New Services Initiatives in APEC
The APEC Business Advisory Committee (ABAC) has prepared a new report entitled "Understanding Services at the Heart of a Competitive Economy" which is being circulated during the APEC meetings this week. This report discusses the dominant role of services across the Asia-Pacific economy, in terms of GDP, job creation, productivity growth, and poverty reduction. Against this background, APEC Business Leaders are calling for a significant new Services initiative in APEC, with a focus on regulatory coherence and a push to improve official collections of services statistics. They also are calling on APEC to incubate the idea of stand-alone services negotiations and to build the critical mass of political will required for stand-alone negotiations to commence. A presentation delivered in Honolulu by Anthony Nightingale, Managing Director of Jardine Matheson, summarising the content of the new Report, is available at globalservicesnetwork.com, along with the ABAC Report itself.
PECC/ADBI Services Policy BriefMeanwhile, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and the Asian Development Bank Institute (PECC/ADBI) Taskforce on Services has likewise issued a Policy Brief (with the major report to be released next month) calling for development of whole-of-services regulatory principles and for future services negotiations to be organized on a stand-alone basis. The Taskforce says that new negotiations could commence plurilaterally, as less than one third of the WTO members have made services offers in the Doha Round. The request-offer process having effectively failed, the Taskforce argues that consideration should be given to the alternative possibility of a new multi-modal framework accord, such as a standstill and rollback deal, with a revised approach to the scheduling of individual commitments. The Policy Brief is available at https://www.uscsi.org/images/files/press-releases/PECC_Policy_Brief_-_Services_Trade.pdf