1. Materializing Busan Roadmap: New Proposals for Trade Facilitation and Capacity Building Dr. David Hong Executive Director Chinese Taipei APEC Study Center

2. Focus of Presentation Offer suggestions for APEC’s work in trade facilitation & capacity building.

3. Rationale of Busan Roadmap APEC developed the Busan Roadmap as part of the review of APEC’s progress called the “2005 Mid-Term Stocktake.” Busan Roadmap provides future direction for APEC to achieve Bogor Goals.

4. Major Parts of Busan Roadmap The Busan Roadmap consists of the following parts: A. Support for the Multilateral Trading System B. Strengthening Collective and Individual Actions C. Promotion of High-Quality RTAs/FTAs D. Busan Business Agenda E. A Strategic Approach to Capacity Building F. The Pathfinder Approach

5. Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building in Busan Roadmap The Busan Business Agenda: State that trade facilitation is crucial for promoting economic progress. APEC must create a business facilitation program. A Strategic Approach to Capacity Building: Relate that APEC recognizes the significance of capacity building effort. Essentially, APEC must promote trade facilitation & capacity building.

6. How can APEC enhance trade facilitation & capacity building? I will now identify them. Please see my paper for detailed analysis.

7. Suggestions for Trade Facilitation First, APEC could create the Trade Facilitation Task Force to manage APEC’s work in trade facilitation, so as to improve coordination and efficiency. Second, APEC could assist WTO in trade facilitation through identifying major issues and developing an agreement.

8. Suggestions for Trade Facilitation Third, APEC could ensure that recommendations from the private sector in trade facilitation are implemented, so as to show that “APEC means business.” Fourth, APEC could identify and provide the capacity building needs of APEC economies when implementing trade facilitation actions for enhancing successful implementation process.

9. Suggestions for Capacity Building First, APEC could promote the idea that all APEC economies may need capacity building and not just developing members. The reason is that all economies are striving for economic development. Second, APEC could provide more funding for capacity building/ECOTECH when work on trade and investment liberalization and facilitation (TILF) shows progress.

10. Suggestions for Capacity Building Third, APEC could cooperate with international financial institutions (IFIs) such as World Bank and ADB on capacity building projects.

11. Suggestions Applicable to Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building First, APEC could focus on implementing actions that maximize benefit to APEC members. This means a ranking system could be developed, so as to assist with the selection of actions. Second, APEC could develop criteria for admission of new APEC members in 2007 that are based on APEC’s goals in trade facilitation & capacity building. The objective is to ensure that new APEC members could contribute to these two areas.

12. Suggestions Applicable to Trade Facilitation & Capacity Building Third, APEC could allow greater participation of scholars in the APEC process. Scholars could provide significant amount of information and analyses. Fourth, APEC could implement more actions that utilize the Pathfinder Approach. The Busan Roadmap has emphasized the Pathfinder Approach whereby a few APEC members could proceed to implement actions.

13. Conclusion We can see that there exist many ideas for enhancing APEC’s work in trade facilitation and capacity building. Our discussions here could serve as a major step for developing suggestions for APEC. Finally, I welcome your comments and hope that we can come up with great suggestions.

14. Thank you!!