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Mexico and APEC,
A Successful
Business and
Trade Partnership
Business opportunities between Mexico and the Asia-Pacific region keep
growing thanks to the country’s participation in APEC, one of the world’s
leading regional economic forums. This success is due in part to key trade
facilitation developments and technical and economic cooperation.
By Sebastián Escalante
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) was established in Canberra, Australia
on Nov. 7, 1989 with the goal of supporting
greater economic and technical
integration among countries in the Pacific
basin and promoting economic, trade and
investment growth in the region. Since then,
it has been one of the world’s most dynamic
mechanisms for regional cooperation.
To date, 21 groups participate in it –Australia,
New Zealand, Papua New Guinea,
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam,
the Philippines, Japan, South Korea,
Russia, Vietnam, the United States, Canada,
Chile, Peru and Mexico. Together they make
up nearly 3 billion people (more than 40% of
the world’s population), 56% of the world’s
Gross Domestic Product and 46% of global
trade. According to 2008 estimates by the
World Bank, it’s anticipated that nearly 70%
of global growth in the next few years will
come from this region.
APEC functions as a mechanism for dialogue
and cooperation. It periodically gathers
heads of state, governmental officials
and representatives from the private sector
to look for agreements on three basic issues:
free trade and investment, facilitation
of businesses and technical and economic
cooperation.
While its resolutions and agreements
aren’t binding, APEC has contributed much
to creating a more dynamic economic bond,
one in which Mexico has been prominent
due to its determined participation.
Mexico and trade
facilitation towards the Pacific
Since the 1994 Bogor Summit in Indonesia,
APEC has moved forward with knocking
down trade barriers between its member
countries. The goal: reducing tariff taxes
among the participating economies to levels
below 5%. This was first to be done with
the region’s more industrialized countries by
2010 and then among the emerging economies
by 2020.
But APEC’s initiatives and proposals
have gone beyond that. Trade facilitation not
only refers to the transportation of products
through borders. It also contemplates the
exchange of services through the Internet,
timely access to financial services, quick and
prompt customs procedures as well as diverse
facilities for the movement of individuals.
Mexico is conscious of this. For the country,
as well as the rest of APEC’s economies,
it’s imperative that barriers that affect the
free movement of people, goods, services and
capital be reduced or eliminated. As a result,
the country has substantially improved its
customs procedures by simplifying processes
and regulations and making substantive
reforms on financial matters, tariffs and infrastructure
among other things.
Mexico successfully presented its second
review of its Individual Action Plan in 2008,
in which it evaluated its advances in relation
to tariffs, non-tariff barriers, services,
investment, customs procedures, intellectual
property, competition, deregulation, rules
of origin and movement of business people,
among other things. The
review concluded Mexico has
made significant advances in accomplishing
the goals set forth in Bogor.
Entrepreneurial
and business mobility
In a world that is becoming more
globalized, trade growth is very
much tied to the mobility of business
people, a key element to closing
negotiations, generating new jobs and
setting investment in place. Such awareness
helped create the APEC Business Travel
Card (ABTC). It gives preferential entrance
and departure to business people who are
citizens of any of the member economies
without the need for a visa or other immigration
paperwork. This card replaces multiple
visas, unifying in one document access
to all of APEC’s economies.
ABTC first began in 1997 within Australia,
South Korea and the Philippines. In 1998,
Chile and Hong Kong adopted the card and
with the participation of Malaysia and New
Zealand in 1999, formal operation of this immigration
access tool began.
Mexico adhered to this mechanism in
2007 and immediately began processing
the nearly 20,000 cards that had been issued
by that time in the rest of the participating
economies. With that, around 20,000
business people and investors from APEC’s
member countries could easily enter Mexico
simply by using ABTC and their passport.
In November 2008, our country created the
first ABTCs for Mexican business people
and investors interested in doing business in
Asia and Oceania.
Currently, 20 countries participate in this
program. Russia is the only APEC economy
that is not taking part while Canada and the
United States maintain certain restrictions