NEWS RELEASES

September 11, 2000 (11:25 a.m. EDT) No. 219

CANADA TO CHAIR APEC TRADE FACILITATION WORKSHOP

International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew announced today that Canada will be chairing a major APEC workshop on trade facilitation in the Asia Pacific region, in Singapore, September 12 to 14. Participants from APEC economies, including international experts from the private sector and prominent speakers from the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) will attend.

"Trade facilitation has been identified by APEC as one of its three priorities, the other two being trade and investment liberalization, and economic and technical co-operation," said Minister Pettigrew.

At the 1999 Auckland Summit, APEC leaders reiterated the need for emphasis on trade facilitation and pledged to strengthen the APEC facilitation agenda.

The workshop project led by Canada, in co-operation with the World Bank and Canada's Asia Pacific Foundation, aims to identify effective reforms in the following areas:

• Standards and regulations;
• Customs procedures;

• Mobility of labour and business professionals;
• Electronic commerce as a mechanism of trade facilitation.

While the need to reduce non-tariff barriers is well-established, there is relatively new evidence that the benefits of facilitation measures, including removing regulatory and standards barriers to trade, may yield greater welfare gains than incremental tariff reductions.

A series of expert-led studies conducted over two days will examine specific problems in APEC developing economies, and will contrast these with experience and best practices in the trade facilitation areas being addressed. While the ultimate APEC objective is policy harmonization across all economies, it is recognized that economies at different stages of development face different implementation realities.

The outcome of the project will be the development of plans appropriate to individual member economy situations. An overview paper on trade facilitation in APEC will be produced for consideration at the APEC leaders meeting in November 2000.

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For further information, media representatives may contact:

Sylvie Bussières

Office of the Minister for International Trade

(613) 992-7332

Media Relations Office

Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

(613) 995-1874

APEC Secretariat, Singapore

Tel.: 65-3737615

Fax: 65-2758431

E-mail: sl@mail.apecsec.org.sg