|
Luncheon Address By His Excellency Pehin Dato Abdul Rahman Taib, Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, Brunei Darussalam and Chair of APEC 2000 Ministerial Meeting on the occasion of a Special APEC Luncheon 29th May 2000, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank the local organizing committee for inviting me to speak at this luncheon and for the hard work they and their overseas colleagues have done to make the dialogues this morning and this afternoon a success. Many of us tend to think of the series of meetings leading up to November in terms of Senior Officials Meetings. However, I know that Senior Officials rely heavily on the substantive contributions of a great many people working across the spectrum of APEC related activities. At this SOM II series of meetings, I am particularly gratified to welcome distinguished academics working in APEC Study Centres throughout the region, trade policy experts from PECC and their guests from the WTO, UNCTAD, the World Bank and the ADB, business experts in human resource development as well as APEC officials working in human resource development and trade policy. Your respective skills and your dedication to the work of APEC make this an unprecedented and I think a fruitful process. Unlike most other regional or international organizations, APEC is only supported by a modest central Secretariat. This is quite intentional. From the outset, APEC has aimed to keep its roots in individual economies to tap the vitality and local knowledge of the many officials, academics and business people, like yourselves, who in their day-to-day work operate in what might be called the APEC market place. This is important because the APEC market place is unquestionably more complex and diverse than most others. We have a rich economic diversity which is the key to the many opportunities for trade and investment and this is overlaid by an equally rich cultural, historical and social diversity. At first glance the latter may be seen as an impediment to our economic affairs and therefore the reason we find it beneficial to come together in APEC. But I believe we should also view our cultural, historical and social diversity as a significant asset; as seeds of creativity and innovation which can be nurtured to relevance and greater effectiveness in a globalizing world. Our task in APEC is not only to make it easier for business to trade and invest across borders but also to build and draw upon that inherent creativity so that we can all be richer in the full sense of the word. Statements of our Leaders including the Bogor Declaration all indicate the importance of APEC bearing fruit from economic growth in this way. For this reason I think it is rather limiting for us in APEC to classify the region just in terms of developed and developing or by our GDP per capita incomes. If we do that, we will have a tendency to design our work programs and particularly our economic and technical cooperation work in equally limiting terms. For practical purposes I think it is useful to view economic and technical cooperation as a means of facilitating and managing change and building capacity to enable that to happen. In the APEC context, change comes from two significant sources: from our liberalisation of trade and investment and from the process of economic growth. These two are closely related and I think it is worth looking briefly at some aspects of the relationship. The positive links between openness and economic growth are well documented. This is an important relationship which has given open economies of the region strong economic growth and bound us together in common resolve to build upon our achievements. But we all know that liberalizing is not easy. The difficult process of change must be handled on the ground by each economy but we are cooperating in many beneficial programs to share experiences and help each other make the adjustments. Much of this cooperation agenda is managed by the APEC Committee on Trade and Investment in the form of Collective Action Plans. It is a commendable and focused agenda aimed at helping adjustment and building capacity in implementation and facilitation. Economic growth itself brings obvious benefits. However, we too often underestimate the difficult effects that economic growth has on all of us as the structures of our economies change over time. These changes occur with perhaps more effect on open economies and even more profoundly with globalisation. They are powerful and unrelenting changes: new industries emerge and others decline, new skills are in demand and while others are no longer needed, our basic institutions like those governing the financial and legal sectors must be updated and redesigned. The consequences of not rising to the challenge of structural changes from economic growth are serious. The economic crisis gave illustrations of that. More generally, I think we have all seen how the difficulty of coping with these structural changes is a major source of new calls for protection or assistance. Economic and technical cooperation therefore not only gives us the capacity to take up new opportunities more effectively, it is a form of insurance against tomorrow’s economic crisis. There are good sound economic reasons why developing economies can benefit most from economic and technical cooperation. It is not just that they have lower per capita incomes or lower levels of development. The record shows that developing economies have much faster economic growth than mature economies and as a consequence they go through more significant and more rapid structural change. Economic and technical cooperation plays a vital role in closing the link between trade and development by strengthening the development side in an ongoing way, consolidating our gains as we proceed. To be most effective, we need programs that are well-targeted and responsive to the whole APEC market place. We should be looking ahead and anticipating our needs rather than being reactive. Importantly, we need to be coordinated and coherent so that APEC’s work is relevant to the way people do business, the way they work and the way they go about their daily lives. Brunei Darussalam is particularly interested to see this approach developed in the area of human resources because we believe that helping people cope with ongoing change is the most positive way to tap their talents and the benefits of diversity I spoke about earlier. I commend the Human Resource Development Working Group and other groups including the Committee on Trade and Investment for the foundations they have laid and the many effective projects they have initiated. We are keen to build on the effectiveness of their work with a medium term strategic plan as recommended by the Ecotech Sub-committee and endorsed by Ministers in Auckland last year. Success in this endeavor and in our liberalizing and cooperation efforts more generally will require all of us to avoid the temptation of compartmentalizing our work. We talk about liberalisation, facilitation and the components of economic and technical cooperation as separate issues in APEC. This is mainly for administrative purposes and to be specific in our work. In reality all of them are strongly linked and mutually supporting. I believe we must become more mindful of the linkages starting from the design of APEC work programs right through to the development of the outcomes. I have drawn a distinction between the changes from liberalisation and the changes from economic growth only to show the importance of economic and technical cooperation and the need to address all parts of the one equation in a coherent way. Keeping an eye on the broader picture will enable APEC to Deliver to the community more effectively. The contributions made by those of you from the research community and from business are especially important. I am sure your interaction this morning with HRD officials and this afternoon with trade and investment officials will benefit APEC and help us develop the very positive aspects of our diversity. I am sure that for many of you this is your first visit to Brunei. I hope very much that you can allocate a little time to exploring the many sites we offer. For a small economy they are quite varied: from the Jerudong Park amusement park to pristine rainforests. If you are unable to make time now, we would welcome you back next year for our Visit Brunei 2001 year. Let me thank you for the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with you and wish you the best in your deliberations. -------END------- |
