APEC vows to make 'ease of doing business' easier

The economic ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) agreed to tackle issues in the hope of making doing business 10 percent cheaper, faster and easier in the next three years.

"We agree with the new aspirational goal of a 10 percent improvement by 2018 in the existing five priority Ease of Doing Business areas," Philippines' Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan told reporters after the APEC Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting late Tuesday.

APEC members pledged to make regulations and procedures easier for companies to start a business, get credit, trade across borders, enforce contracts and deal with permits.

The indicators include the number of procedures and documents, time, cost, paid-in minimum capital, public registry coverage and depth of credit information index.

"It's our estimate that [10 percent] is what is practically reasonable in that span of time. It's not a highly scientifically derived number," Alan Bollard, executive director of the APEC Secretariat, told reporters.

Lowering registration and transaction costs are expected to benefit for both companies and individuals operating within the APEC region.

"We haven't detailed and modeled it out, but if we achieve this we expect to see costs coming down for firms, prices coming down for consumers, more exports," Bollard noted.

"We should expect more women in business, more micro, small and medium enterprises working in the international arena and trading and in the labor market, we're also looking at bolstering older and younger employment as well," he added.



Action plan

APEC outlined the target and priority areas in its Second Ease of Doing Business Action Plan for 2016 to 2018.

The 21-member group previously targeted a 25 percent improvement in the business environment as measured by certain indicators under the first Ease of Doing Business Action Plan for 2010 to 2015.

But APEC was able to achieve only 12.7 percent as of last year. Economic ministers admitted that member economies are likely fail in reaching the target.

"It still constitutes significant progress towards producing tangible results while taking into account the challenging economic environment in which reforms were implemented," the second action plan read.

The economic ministers recommended the affirmation of the new action plan by the APEC leaders during the summit proper in November.

During this week's ministerial meeting, the member economies also endorsed the work program embodied in the Renewed APEC Strategy for Structural Reform to break behind-the-border trade barriers in the region. – VS, GMA News