Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation: New Agenda in Its Third Decade

4. Has APEC Achieved the Mid-term Bogor Goals?

Has APEC Achieved the Mid-term Bogor Goals? 37 4 Has APEC Achieved the Mid-term Bogor Goals? The Year of Mid-term Bogor Goal The year 2010 was the mid-term target of the Bogor Goals issued by President Soeharto that “industrialized economies achieve free and open trade by the year 2010, while rest of the economies by 2020”. Have these ambitious goals been achieved? Although it is not well known that APEC has shifted to more realistic timelines since the Asian currency crisis, many people still remember the Bogor Goals, APEC’s main appeal. APEC has to reply to this question, which Japan, as its host in 2010, tackled together with senior officials of other economies. Japan’s hosting of APEC this particular year may be related to the fact that she also hosted it and produced the Osaka Action Agenda to achieve the Bogor Goals in 1995. It requires sensitive diplomatic efforts to respond to this question given APEC’s “no name, no shame” modality. Despite such diplomatic constraint, economists wish to find out to what extent the Bogor Goals have been achieved so far. This chapter presents an attempt by an independent expert.1 At November’s Leaders’ Meeting and Ministerial Meeting in Japan, APEC provided an assessment of the progress towards achieving the Bogor Goals by the industrialized economies plus alpha.2 APEC’s IAPs 38 APEC: New Agenda in its Third Decade (Individual Action Plans) tend to give details of implementations in its positive list that stretches over hundreds of pages but seldom mentions what still remains unachieved. It is contrary to the European Union’s formula in which all measures of regional integration are obligatory under the law, and the implementation by individual member states are scored openly so that they are effectively implemented (p. 28). APEC will not be able to adopt the European Union formula immediately, but the author believes that APEC needs to move in the direction of objective assessment of individual economy’s achievements. Quantitative Assessment: Methodology and Basic Data Our quantitative assessment is made based on the IAP peer reviews and MTST (Mid-Term Stock-Take) Project Team Experts Report (2005). The latter provides the only comparative analysis of all APEC economies’ progress towards the Bogor Goals in fifteen areas of the Osaka Action Agenda (OAA), based on the peer review reports of 2003–05. It was updated with the IAPs and Peer Review Reports of 2007–09. The peer review reports were adopted through discussions at SOM and it is quite legitimate to base our assessment on this information. In order to quantify our assessment, we have introduced a five-grade system as follows: 5: Almost achieved 4: Achieved with major exceptions 3: Achieved by more than half 2: Implemented partly 1: Not started yet. Precise criteria for each grade are set for concrete stages of achievement in individual areas (Table 4.1). These may sound too broad a base for assessment, but they are the maximum we can claim as objective assessment, based on the IAP peer reviews and MTST reports. Our assessment proceeded as follows: (1) Specify the concrete details of the Bogor Goals by individual areas, according to the OAA. Draw a road map of five stages towards the goal, which provides us with the five grades in our assessment of achievement (Table 4.1) (2) Assess individual economies’ progress by area, score them based on the Peer Review Report and MTST expert report (Table 4.2), and produce a summary matrix of economies by area (Table 4.3). (3) Draw a radar chart for each economy (Figures 4.1–4.21), which show Has APEC Achieved the Mid-term Bogor Goals? 39 TABLE 4.1 Criteria for Five-grade Assessment by Area Criteria for five grades: 5: Almost achieved, 4: Achieved with major exceptions, 3: Achieved by more than half, 2: Implemented partly, 1: Not started yet. Tariffs 5 SAA tariffs of 5% or less and peak tariffs less than 5% 4 SAA tariffs of 6–10% and peak tariffs less than 10% 3 SAA tariffs of 11–20% and peak tariffs less than 20% 2 SAA tariffs of over 20% and many peak tariffs 1 Services 5 Number of GATS liberalized sectors: 25–19 4 Number of GATS liberalized sectors: 15–8 3 Number of GATS liberalized sectors: less than 6 2 No GATS sector committed yet 1 Investment 5...