In consensus with each of the 20 APEC economies and, at the same time, unique and distinctive, bringing forth our country’s interests. This describes Chile’s agenda as Chair of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in 2004.

Out of respect for the current host economy, Chile will not present the Theme of its Agenda until Thailand’s chairmanship concludes. However, some issues dealing with APEC’s permanent work agenda and Chile’s own plan have been addressed publicly throughout the year.

Chile’s agenda has been discussed with each APEC member economy with a view to define a strategy that incorporates the objectives of APEC, its members, and Chile’s.

Among APEC’s objectives are the Bogor Goals, defined in 1994, which aim to achieve free flow of goods, services and investments among APEC economies, in two stages, in accordance with each economy’s development level. By 2010 for developed economies – USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Singapore – and by 2020 for developing economies.

In 1995, a year after it joined APEC, Chile enrolled in the first deadline, confirming its intention to open its trade at regional level.

In order to reach these goals, APEC’s 21 member economies have defined three pillars: trade liberalization and facilitation, investment liberalization and facilitation, and economic and technical cooperation. APEC’s various technical work groups - such as business people’s mobility, or chemical dialogue, to mention just two - focus their work in the direction pointed out by APEC members.

The Permanent Agenda for an APEC year includes Ministerial Meetings preceded by a Meeting of Senior Officials named by each economy to lead the process toward the Bogor Goals. APEC economies have already been informed of the Schedule Chile has proposed for the following meetings to take place in 2004: Ministers Responsible for Trade (June 4-5), Finance Ministers (2-3 September), Small and Medium Enterprise Ministers (6-7 October) and Joint Ministerial Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministers (17-18 November).

According to this schedule, to be implemented in our main cities, the culmination of Chile’s APEC year shall be November 20-21, 2004, when the Heads of economies such as the USA, China, and Japan assemble in our capital city to attend the Asia Pacific Leaders’ Meeting.

Following the terrorist attacks to the USA in 2001, security became an issue on the agendas of most multilateral and regional organizations. APEC was no exception and Leaders expressed their concern in the Shanghai Declaration in 2001, which gave rise to the adoption of STAR - Secure Trade in the APEC Region Initiative- in last year’s Summit in Mexico.

As mentioned, secure trade is indispensable to achieve greater prosperity and welfare in the region. But Chile does not want secure trade to lead to greater cost that might, in practice, become non-tariff barriers to trade.

Our country also promotes open and transparent dialogue regarding Free Trade Agreements in APEC. The fact that we have entered into FTA’s with several APEC economies (currently in force with Canada and Mexico; in the process of legislative ratification with the USA and South Korea; and under negotiation with New Zealand and Singapore; and an Economic Complementation Agreement, ECA, with Peru) qualifies us to take up this matter in APEC.

2004 will also be a year marked by the conclusion of WTO multilateral negotiations. It is unthinkable that the Leaders of the region responsible for nearly half of the world’s GDP will not discuss the progress of the Development Round.

Conscious of the need to build an inclusive and not exclusive equitable development, Chile has also expressed its interest in strengthening the use of the English language as a working tool. This is one of the essential keys to open global trade to small and medium enterprises, which amount to 80% of all enterprises in the Asia Pacific region.

The implementation of this concern, based on APEC’s technical cooperation pillars and trade facilitation goals, is another message that Chile has discussed in its agenda as Chair of the Asia Pacific Cooperation Forum.

-Source: Press Release APEC Chile 2004