Official Portal of Ministry of International Trade and Industry Malaysia

18th APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting 4-5 June 2012
06 Jun 2012 03:20 PM

Y.B. Dato' Sri Mustapa Mohamed, Minister of International Trade and Industry attended the 18 th APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) Meeting in Kazan, Russia from 4 – 5 June 2012. The agenda for the two-day proceedings, attended by Ministers of Trade of 21 APEC member economies, focused on:

APEC support for the Multilateral Trading System and Resisting Protectionism;
Trade and Investment Liberalisation and Asia Pacific Regional Economic Integration;
Supply Chain; and
Cooperation to Foster Innovative Growth .

During the discussion on the multilateral trading system, the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Mr. Pascal Lamy noted that there is an alarming concern over the increasing trend of resorting to protectionist measures. Over the last 6 months, from October 2011 to March 2012, there had been an increasing resort to trade restrictive measures affecting 1% of global trade.

In his intervention YB MITI Minister cautioned against the practice of certain economies resorting to protectionism in this critical time of slow growth. He said that “economies must not further risk putting the global economy in deeper depression and should rollback any trade restrictive measures put in place. It is essential for APEC economies, which contribute 45% of global trade, to continue supporting the rules-based multilateral trading system, resist protectionism and ensure that markets remain open for trade and investment.”

He reiterated the importance of progressing the work of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) . Director-General Pascal Lamyalso informed APEC Trade Ministers on the state-of-play in the Doha Development Agenda and the current global trade scenario.

“It would be useful and important for us to inject optimism to the current ‘gloomy' global trade environment and progress the works that have been done so far at the multilateral level,” he added.

YB Dato' Sri Mustapa also commented on the future of the WTO's Doha Development Agenda negotiations and expressed his views that the MRT Meeting must send strong and positive signals to create a push and retain the sustainability of the negotiating round. “Members of the WTO must “inject optimism” into the global economy by working towards an early harvest of issues such as Trade Facilitation and Least Developed Countries' issues,” he suggested.

He further proposed that an incremental approach to conclude the Doha round. In this regard, he welcomed the new approaches in the services negotiations in the WTO.

In a separate bilateral meeting with DG Lamy, MITI Minister proposed that the WTO convene a ministerial meeting within the next 6 months to discuss the current gloomy global trade growth and the increasing resort to protectionism. This initiative would be to address and reverse the increasing resort to trade restrictive measures in view of the gloomy forecast for global trade growth.

The Malaysian Trade Minister further expressed Malaysia's position on the various areas of Trade and Investment Liberalisation and Regional Economic Integration:

Despite the extent of liberalisation of trade in free trade agreements (FTAs), there still exist tariff peaks and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) and this results in hidden trade impediments. APEC members must now make further steps to address these NTBs to facilitate trade flows in the region.
On regionalism, Malaysia reported on the successful conclusion of the comprehensive FTA between Malaysia and Australia recently.
On facilitation of trade and investment on environmental goods and services, Malaysia is fully supportive of the voluntary and non-binding work towards the liberalisation of environmental goods. According to Minister Mustapa, such liberalisation can create growth and jobs while at the same time enhance economies' efforts towards environmental protection and sustainable development.

Trade Ministers also discussed supply chain issues during the MRT meeting. Dato' Sri Mustapa remarked that establishment of effective supply chains in the region is very essential. Y.B. Dato' Sri emphasised the importance of sharing best practices across the APEC economies and reiterated the engagement of the private sector particularly the multinational corporations as well as small and medium enterprises in the exercise. He then highlighted the role of technology in creating a big impact on the supply chains.

With regard to the issue of innovation, Y.B. Minister commended Russia's initiative in making the subject as one of its priorities for APEC 2012. He highlighted that it cut across many sectors and opportunities are boundless, therefore called on APEC to prioritise its work programme by filling in the gaps. He also reiterated that for innovation to thrive, it needs a good ecosystem particularly financing and the process needs to be inclusive and benefit the society at large.