Inside Out | APEC Senior Officials meeting in Lima offers reassuring vision for trade liberalisation
As the voices of protectionism and xenophobia have risen, perhaps APEC’s work is more important than ever
For the past two weeks I have been camped in a crisp but soulless hotel room in Lima, slugging daily through the Peruvian capital’s war zone traffic jams to the morgue-like convention centre to APEC Senior Officials meetings. It is at times like this that you pause to ask “Why?”
Flying the 18,354 km to Lima from Hong Kong takes a brain-numbing 30+ hours whichever way round the world you travel.
With the economy air tickets costing HK$12,000 or so, and the hotel bill mounting to HK$16,000 or more – repeated at least three times a year – we need to feel confident that we are making the world a better place.
But for many of you reading this, who may not have the foggiest idea what APEC is all about, or what possible good is being achieved by these air marathons, I can feel your skeptical breath on my neck.
So it was timely on Friday, with just a couple of days to go before the final Lima meetings, to dedicate a day to what APEC has achieved over its 26-year life, and what it should be trying to do over the coming decade. For the trade policy wonks gathered at the APEC meetings, this conversation begins, and is framed by, one thing above all others: the Bogor Goals.
Agreed in Bogor in Indonesia in 1994, the goals defined a single rather radical ambition: free and open trade and investment among the 21 APEC economies by 2020.
