APEC and Andean Community agree on defending open markets

Lima, Jan. 22 99. Timothy Hannah, Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), and Sebastián Alegrett, Andean Community (CAN) Secretary General, analyzed the international crisis and agreed that "open markets are the key to our countries' future development."

Following the meeting held today at the CAN General Secretariat, Timothy Hannah stated that the two organizations have a great deal in common and share the idea of open regionalism.

"It will be possible to continue moving ahead, so long as we keep certain premises in mind, like an open market, competition, and privatization," he emphasized.

The APEC's Executive Director, visiting Peru since yesterday, made this declaration after meeting with Andean Community Secretary General Sebastián Alegrett and with the organization's directors.

The CAN's Secretary General, for his part, after calling the exchange of experiences he had just concluded with the Executive Director of APEC "highly profitable," stated that "the presence of APEC in Peru is extremely important to the Andean Community, for it enables us to be truly associated with the evolution of this great Pacific market."

Although APEC is not an integration organization, Alegrett considers it to be "an open forum seeking to establish defined playing rules for the opening of trade among Pacific countries. Undoubtedly, it focuses on a series of issues that are of interest to integration and we should take advantage of them."

APEC is a broad economic cooperation forum established in 1989 and made up of Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States. Peru, Russia, and Vietnam have recently become members.

The Andean Community, for its part, is a subregional integration organization created in 1969 and comprised of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, countries with a total population in the neighborhood of 105 billion and a Gross Domestic Product of about 185 billion dollars.

Recently available data reveal that Andean exports to the APEC countries have risen steadily since 1991, jumping from 14 billion to almost 25 billion dollars in 1996. APEC is extremely important as a market of origin of Andean imports (55%) and of destination for its products (52.7%) worldwide.

Alegrett, in referring to the Brazilian crisis, was of the opinion that "it is being brought under control and is hopefully beginning to stabilize." Its direct impact on the Andean countries "should not be too significant," he ventured, "because there is relatively little trade between the two blocs."

"Its consequences on us are more indirect, because of the impact of the crisis on international financial markets and their reflection on us," he explained. He didn't feel there would be "any major setback."

As for the impact of this crisis on negotiations between the Andean Community and Mercosur, he insisted that it should be clearly kept in mind that the negotiations are going to cover a much longer time span. "They are neither circumstantial nor temporary, so a crisis like the Brazilian one cannot affect the direction these negotiations are taking," he stressed.