Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the APEC Business Forum plenary session
[Delivered at Shangri-La Hotel, Makati City, November 22, 1996]
Business in the
creation of a new world
AS ONE who has traveled the world in search of potential investors; as one who has been calling for deeper private business participation in the decision-making processes of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), what makes my day today is the sight in this convention hall of a sea of CEO faces. In a more poetic way, what made the English poet William Wordsworth’s day was, seeing across the street, a “host of golden daffodils.”
I am delighted to see you all.
Welcome to the Philippines—and welcome to APEC!
Translating vision into reality
We meet here at a moment of opportunity and challenge for our Asia-Pacific region—a great moment when, as you say in business, vision can be translated into reality through action.
For myself and my fellow leaders of APEC, this is the moment when we move from talk to action. By adopting the 1996 Manila Action Plan for APEC (MAPA 96) we shall commit our 18 member-countries to specific, detailed, individual—and collective—plans to begin carrying out trade and investment liberalization beginning January 1st of next year.
These plans will be comprehensive and progressive. And they will be refined and augmented each year.
Through APEC, our 18 member-countries also expect to contribute substantially to the first Ministerial Conference of the WTO—the new World Trade Organization—in Singapore next month. We will reaffirm APECs commitment to the global multilateral trading system; and we will strengthen our region’s ability to catalyze global trade liberalization.
And we will be discussing new ways of enriching our economic and technical cooperation to meet global challenges of the future. There is a wealth of economic expertise and technical knowledge in our region— and we have only begun to explore the possibilities for sharing that know-how in a way that redounds to the collective growth of one and all.
APEC today stands at the frontier of developing new models for economic cooperation that will reshape the world in the 21st century.
The role of ABAC and ABF
To this historic undertaking, this first—and surely not the last—APEC Business Forum convenes as a parallel summit. (Our friends in the media would probably bill it as a “curtain raiser.”)
But however we describe it, the objective of this Forum, I believe, is crystal-dear. It is to locate business in its rightful place within the region—and that place is shoulder to shoulder with our peoples and governments in the pursuit of the vision we all share of the Asia-Pacific community.
The claim of business to such a place of eminence is rooted not so much in aspiration as in everyday reality. For in a vital way, the Asia-Pacific region is really a creation of business.
Before there was APEC, it was business—in the course of doing business—which linked our various economies into what everyone now calls a region.
And it was businessmen of the region—trading with one another and investing in each other’s enterprises—who produced and sustained the economic boom that APEC has now been established to promote.
This year marks an important advance for business participation in the APEC process. This participation began with the organization of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC)—and it will continue in the meeting between the business community and the APEC leaders a few days from now.
At that meeting we, the leaders, will receive what one of you has felicitously described as “your practical and result-oriented recommendations.”
ABAC is the mechanism for channeling business-sector views into the APEC process. This Forum—the ABF—broadens our efforts to integrate the business community into APEC.
This broadening takes many forms. For some, it is an introduction to APEC. For others it is an opportunity for networking. Many look on this as a partnering event—and some of you may end up actually doing business together.
Today, I ask you to raise your sights—beyond the goal of just making APEC more relevant to business—to that of making business more relevant to APEC.
I ask you to consider the great and necessary task of building an Asia-Pacific Community and the role you should play in it.
A new culture for solving problems
As APEC chairman for 1996,1 have thought long and hard about APEC—and about what is required to sustain it in the long run. And I am convinced that liberalizing and facilitating trade and investment alone cannot do it—however important trade and investment may be in sustaining the vigor of the Asia-Pacific region.
I think we should ask ourselves:
Beyond the economic interdependence that free and open trade and investment foster, what can hold together and move a region so geographically dispersed and so diverse culturally, politically and economically as our region?
The crafting of the correct answer is urgent—especially since integration may result in short-term dislocations, and in marginalizing some segments of national societies; and since, on the long road to free and open trade and investment, we cannot rely on a natural or automatic agreement to materialize between regional goals and the individual interests of national economies.
We need to develop a culture for solving problems together—out of a deep sense of obligation to build a community of APEC economies. I use the word “culture”, advisedly—to distinguish it from formal, legalistic structures based on contractual obligations.
Fostering the culture of consultation
The multilateral institutions erected in the postwar era—the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and GATT—were all founded on such formal structures. And these global institutions were replicated in regional structures established to promote regional economic cooperation or regional economic integration—producing mixed results.
The European Community of developed and homogenous economies was successful. But the Latin-American free-trade association, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the European Defense Community and some others were not so favored.
On the North American Free-Trade Agreement or NAFTA, the jury is still out: or so it seems. ASEAN—next to the European Community—is one of the few regional groupings that have enjoyed a measure of success.
We of ASEAN have no doubt that ASEAN’s viability and endurance are owed to its avoidance of legalistic, multilateral structures—in favor of cultivating the culture of consultation and consensus among its members. It is through these expanding habits of solidarity and teamwork that we are building a sense of community in the politically, culturally and economically diverse subregion of Southeast Asia.
I am convinced we should begin to do the same in AFEC. And fortunately we have the means at hand to do so. This is the instrument of economic and technical cooperation.
In Osaka last year, the APEC leaders identified the three pillars on which they wanted to build the APEC community. These pillars are (1) trade and investment liberalization; (2) trade and investment facilitation; and (3) economic and technical cooperation.
The Osaka Agenda stated the goals of economic and technical cooperation or ecotech, thus:
“APEC economies will pursue economic and technical cooperation in order to attain sustainable growth and equitable development in the Asia-Pacific region, while reducing economic disparities among APEC economies and improving economic and social well-being. Such efforts will facilitate the growth of trade and investment in the region.”
Opening a new frontier
Here in Manila—in part through a ministerial declaration that will come out today—economic and technical cooperation will be given clearer direction, sharper focus and firmer private-sector orientation.
Economic and technical cooperation, as a consequence, will focus on the following priority areas:
- Develop human capital;
- Enhance efficiency and stability of capital markets;
- Strengthen economic infrastructure and harness technologies of the future;
- Safeguard the quality of life through environmentally sound growth; and
- Strengthen the dynamics of small and medium enterprises.
The key role of the private sector in economic and technical cooperation will be emphasized and encouraged.
Some may think all this talk about an Asia-Pacific community is quixotic—and not fit for discussion among hardnosed businessmen.
But I say this enterprise is in every way integral to the pursuits and interests of business—if we look on it as the opening of a new frontier and a new route to the future.
Just as in the age of exploration the opening of new worlds brought out the vitality of men of industry and commerce, so in this undertaking your imagination and your enterprise will provide the energy to make things happen.
A new model of cooperation
In substance, I believe we must strive within the Asia-Pacific community to build a new model of cooperation for development and shared prosperity.
The traditional model relied on the transfer of resources from the rich to the poor as the essential transaction in development cooperation. The new model’s preferred mode of cooperation is the sharing of information, knowledge, experience and expertise.
The old model relied on governments to assume the central role in development cooperation. The new model would encourage initiative and participation from the private sector.
The old model relied on flows of aid from the donor to the donee. In the new model, everyone contributes in accordance with one’s capabilities. Priorities are jointly set. And there are no “junior partners”—only “equal partners.”
All our efforts—our declarations, our action plans, our commitments to free and open trade and investment—all of these are tied to a vision of shared economic prosperity. The true importance of APEC lies in its unparalleled potential to stimulate new economic opportunities throughout our region.
And I am not just talking only about the big players—the CEOs—who are here for the APEC Business Forum—though clearly trade and investment liberalization will bring about major benefits for the large corporations and multinationals represented here.
I am also talking about the small entrepreneur in Java who will benefit from our joint efforts in APEC to stimulate training opportunities and the sharing of expertise in the small and medium enterprise sector.
I am talking about the high-school graduate in Port Moresby who will compete for a manufacturing job created by virtue of APEC’s efforts to create incentives for additional cross-border investment flows.
I am talking about the Mindanao farmer whose ability to get his crops to market will be enhanced by the new roads that will be built—thanks to the strong cooperation between the public and the private sector on infrastructure development that is being promoted through APEC.
At the most basic level, the APEC vision is about improving people’s lives. We who live in free-market societies know that growth, prosperity and human development and fulfillment are created by the exertions of men and institutions that are free to invent and create—in a word, by economies driven by the energy and enterprise of the private sector.
Regionism as our common cause
In the global economy of our time, our business communities, no less than our governments, need a common vision to bring them together and enable them to achieve goals together.
If we do not take up “regionism” as our collective cause—if we do not recognize a higher purpose beyond our immediate corporate and special interests,—then we will be bogged down by endless quarrels over details, turf and concessions.
Yet our experience in recent years overwhelmingly points us toward a growing sense of community. Our business sectors, long before our governments, have been forging partnerships and alliances that have enabled them to grow.
And our nations have followed—molding practical ways of cooperation and accommodation in order to move forward.
The Asia-Pacific region—rich in its diversity of people and cultures, and blessed with an abundance of natural resources and human capital—stands on the threshold of a kind of community it has not known in all of history.
In great and myriad ways—within this final decade of the 20th century—we have been discovering together what is common within our diversity; what is simple behind the complexities, and what is enduring behind the tides of change.
APEC takes this process of convergence to a new and higher plane of partnership.
The challenge to you then is for business to take on its rightful role in bringing the Asia-Pacific its full maturation to community I am confident you will march ahead of all—in the frontlines, as always—in the creation of this new Asia-Pacific community.