Charting a Course for Pacific Rim Business : Trade: In a report to the region’s major partners, business leaders recommend streamlined travel and creation of ombudsmen to settle problems.
A group of Pacific Rim business leaders has issued a “road map” to free trade and secure investment that calls for exempting business travelers from visa requirements, putting investment protections into law and creating ombudsmen to smooth over trade problems.
The recommendations come from Pacific Business Forum, created two years ago to advise the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, a group of 18 Pacific nations from Canada to Australia.
APEC last year committed itself to dismantling trade barriers in the region by 2020. President Clinton made creation of APEC one of his major foreign policy objectives and pushed hard for the free-trade commitment.
The forum proposals were summarized during a news conference Saturday by Les McCraw, chairman and CEO of Irvine’s Fluor Corp. and a forum co-chairman. He described them as “tangible, real-world actions” to make conducting business easier in the Pacific.
Among the proposals:
* Exempt business travelers from visa requirements by 1999, and by next year begin issuing business visas good for multiple entries.
* Simplify obtaining business residence visas by the end of next year.
* Streamline customs procedures in general. McCraw said customs headaches often are more of a deterrent to trade than are tariffs.
* Create a task force that would identify needed infrastructure improvements and develop investment protection guidelines by the end of next year. This would help create the stability necessary for private investors to build, for example, a toll road knowing they would be allowed to collect tolls in the future, McCraw said.
* Strengthen APEC’s investment principles and make sure all nations have adopted them as law by 2005.
* Create a successor to the Pacific Business Forum after it disbands later this year. The new organization should help monitor whether nations are living up to their commitments. APEC ministers and national leaders should also review progress.
* Study the merits of an ombudsman in each government who can investigate trade and investment problems.
* Improve the climate for medium and small businesses in the region.
McCraw said the report does not specify how such goals are to be achieved. “We were just responding to [APEC’s] question: ‘What gets in the way of trade?’ ” he said. The forum did not address political ramifications, he said.
The forum recommendations will be submitted Sept. 22 to APEC when it reconvenes in Tokyo.
