With New Zealand's hosting of the APEC Forum moving out of first gear, officials hope to lead the way on how the trading system can respond to the Covid-19 pandemic while preparing the Asia-Pacific for prosperity in the decades ahead
As Auckland bounced in and out of lockdown, the organisers behind New Zealand's hosting of the APEC 2021 forum may have breathed a sigh of relief.
The Government's decision last year to pivot to a series of 'virtual' events due to the Covid-19 pandemic meant the first series of senior officials' meetings, which started in mid-February and wrap up this week, were largely safeguarded from alert level changes as they took place not in crowded meeting rooms but their online equivalent.
But the coronavirus response has still been at the fore in officials' talks, a state of play likely to endure throughout the year.
Vangelis Vitalis, who is overseeing the APEC agenda as senior officials’ meetings chair, told a media briefing 2021 was “certainly going to be a challenging year to state the obvious”, with continued uncertainty around the health crisis as well as the economic consequences both within countries and throughout the global trading system.
Vitalis, who is also the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s deputy secretary for trade and economic issues, said the assumptions underpinning the Asia-Pacific approach to regional integration over the last three decades faced tremendous strain.
“We are seeing a second wave of protectionism across our region, unfortunately driven by the pandemic, and that’s one of the things we’re going to need to deal with. In fact, this has been the sharpest spike in protectionism since the establishment of the World Trade Organisation in 1995.”
APEC 'could lead way' on essential Covid items
Among the initiatives to counter that protectionism is a New Zealand-led proposal for APEC members to eliminate all tariffs on the import of goods essential for fighting Covid-19, such as face masks, syringes and other medical supplies.
Vangelis said some countries in the region imposed tariffs of up to six percent on vaccines, 20.7 percent on syringes, and 30 percent on the specialised cooling boxes required to carry the doses.
APEC members now needed to reach agreement on what items should be included on the list, with the potential to lead the way globally given no international organisation had put such a document together.
“You'd think that it was pretty obvious that face masks and syringes will be vital parts of that but there is no agreement, there is certainly no agreement in Geneva at the World Trade Organisation.”
He would not put a timeframe on when New Zealand hoped to reach an outcome, but said an urgent response was needed given the pandemic was well underway.
“If we can move chilled food products across borders in six hours in the RCEP agreement, surely vaccines, that really urgent question for all of us across the region, should be moved more swiftly.”
Another topic of discussion during APEC meetings had been how to improve the processes for moving Covid-19 vaccines between countries, avoiding unnecessary hold-ups at the border.
“If we can move chilled food products across borders in six hours in the RCEP agreement, surely vaccines, that really urgent question for all of us across the region, should be moved more swiftly.”
DHL had estimated it would take 15,000 flights to move vaccines across the Asia-Pacific region, while transportation from airports and ports to remote communities was another related issue APEC members could need to address.
Beyond the pandemic, New Zealand wanted to address the digital divide which had been exacerbated by Covid-19, while climate change and sustainability were also priorities, along with the traditional APEC focus on improving free trade arrangements across the region.
The “overwhelming priority” for the year was to develop an implementation plan for the Putrajaya Vision, a leaders’ declaration agreed last year which set out APEC’s priorities through to 2040.
'More intensive, engaged' online format
Vitalis said the virtual format had led to officials taking a “much more intensive and engaged” approach in arranging regular meetings with counterparts rather than waiting for them to arrive in the country, while it had also led to greater participation from APEC members.
Organisers had cut down typically sprawling meeting agendas from several days to three hours, as well as introducing a two-minute “countdown clock” for individual responses, to improve discussion between members.
“If I think about where we've been and where we are now, there's almost no comparison - I've been struck at how willing people are to interact, to put down their statement that they would normally be reading out and actually engage with us.”
The fact that Malaysia, the 2020 host country, had managed to broker agreement on a joint leaders’ statement when it had to switch to a virtual format also offered positive signs about the path ahead.
MFAT deputy secretary for APEC 2021 Andrea Smith said the organisers had received positive early feedback from foreign officials about the ease of using the virtual platform - based around Microsoft Teams - and the way meetings had been run so far.
