We have just finished what I would call a historic meeting
when we, the leaders of eighteeen Asia-Pacific economies,
steered the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation community
from vision to action.
The Philippine Government and the Filipino have been
privileged and proud to host this historic meeting.
In our meeting, we set out to do four tasks.
First, we sought to define our vision of an Asia-Pacific
community and determine how we can deepen and
strengthen the sense of community among us and our
peoples. From our discussions, we came away with the
vision of a community of Asia-Pacific economics that
freely trade with and invest in one another with the
participation of and for the benefit of all the peoples of the
region.
Our second task was to address the opportunities and
challenges presented by the economic, and technological
globalization sweeping the world. We emerged from our
meeting determined to ensure that our peoples' standard of
living and their environment are enhanced and any
dislocations in their lives and livelihoods are mitigated.
We set out to maintain the momentum of APEC without
losing its informal and voluntary character. We concluded
that the best way would continue to be the APEC approach
of forging ahead with specific measures to reach our goals -
flexibly, voluntarily, but in a concerted manner and
encouraging and helping one another, sharing contributions
and benefits, while acting together in the bayanihan spirit
for the good of all.
We took a special look at the need of the developing
countries of East Asia for infrastructure roads and bridges,
seaports and airports, telecommunications, energy, and
water - facilities that are vital for economic growth and a
better quality of life but would cost enormous sums of
money. The World Bank estimates that from 1.2 to 1.5
trillion U. S. dollars would be required to finance this
massive demand.
Such large amounts would be beyond the capacity of
governments to raise and manage. This, as well as the basic
nature of economics, led us to re-affirm that the
participation of the private sector is essential to the
decision-making and the work of APEC, Indeed, it is the
business sector that has created and driven the Asia-Pacific
economic boom.
The Philippine chairmanship of APEC leading to today's
leaders meeting was marked by two concerns:
One was the human side of development, that is, the
building of human resources the development of human
skills, the protection of the environment, the alleviation of
poverty. For this purpose, I consulted non-governmental
organizations academics, and church groups, as, I am Sure,
many of the other leaders did, too, in their own countries.
The other was our emphasis on the essential role of the
private sector in APEC's work, which led the Philippine
business community to organize the APEC Business Forum
at the same time as the APEC meetings. Some 450 top
leaders of some of the world's largest corporations gathered
in Manila on this occasion to exchange views and form
joint undertakings.
I am glad to report that the rest of APEC shared these
positions.
I have said that our meeting today was historic. And so it
was, in the sense that it launched the implementation phase
of the process that began with the vision of an Asia-Pacific
community projected on Blake Island, went on to the
setting in Bogor of the goal of free and open trade and
investment by 2010/2020, and proceeded to the action
agenda of Osaka.
Our meeting today marked the beginning of action to carry
out the agenda of Osaka toward the goals of Bogor in
fulfillment of the vision of Blake Island.
Today, APEC has begun to act.
In keeping with APEC's call to action, we made very
specific decisions and issued definite instructions.
We endorsed the Manila Action Plan for APEC, the long
list of concrete measures which our governments,
individually or collectively, had committed to undertake to
lower and remove barriers to trade and investment and
make trade and investment easier. We decided to
implement these measures as early as the start of next
January and instructed our ministers to meet next year to
review them with the help of the private sector. We also
directed our ministers to recommend sectors in which
further substantial liberalization measures could be
undertaken and ways of carrying them out.
We instructed our ministers to step up their work on
practical steps pertaining to customs procedures,
harmonizing customs nomenclatures, and aligning
standards, thus reducing the cost of doing international
business and lowering prices for consumers and industries.
We agreed to push for the conclusion by the first WTO
ministerial meeting in Singapore next month of an
agreement that would substantially reduce, if not eliminate,
tariffs on information technology products by 2000, giving
suitable allowance for flexibility. We urged that negotiations
be stepped up so as to bring about universality of
membership in WTO, in the light of the need to bring
China and Chinese Taipei into the global trading system.
APEC thus goes to Singapore next month with a renewed
commitment to WTO's purposes and determined to move
them forward.
Trade investments and economic growth, indispensable as
they are, cannot be enough. Aware of this, we re-affirmed
the need to make sure that most people benefit from and
get involved in APEC's work, and participate in APEC's
decision-making process, the need to ensure that growth
does not lead to greater differences between people's
standards of living, within economies or between them.
Nor should we allow growth to result in the destruction of
the environment.
These considerations permeated our discussions today and
are woven throughout our approach to economic and
technical cooperation, on which we laid particular emphasis
in our work in Manila and Subic, and even in our message
to the APEC Business Forum. Here in Subic, we directed
our ministers to assign, in APEC's economic and technical
cooperation, high priority to human development, to the
use of the technologies of the future, to growth that is
environmentally sustainable, and to small and medium
enterprises. Reflecting our concern for the environment, we
asked our ministers to carry out a program promoting the
protection of the marine environment, clean technology and
clean production, and sustainable cities and to report to us
when we meet next year in Vancouver.
By agreeing to press forward on liberalizing trade and
investment and making trading and investing easier, we the
leaders of APEC have promoted the growth of our
economies and their progressive integration. In this way,
we have helped to make the regional economy, our
respective economies and our enterprises more efficient
and more productive. We have thus taken important steps
to keep prices down, create jobs, and raise living standards.
By giving high priority to the protection of the
environment, we have sought to ensure that growth can be
sustained for future generations and that those generations
will inherit a habitable earth. By giving primacy to the
human person and the human community, we have
manifested our determination that our labors will remain
focused on the well-being of the focus and object of our
undertakings and purposes.
In doing all this, we have become, in Subic, more of a
community in this dynamic region.
