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Director-General of Trade departs for Osaka APEC
The Director-General of Trade, Mr Tony Miller, said today (Saturday) that the draft Action Agenda will be finalised and submitted to the Asia Pacific Economic Co- operation (APEC) ministers and economic leaders at the Osaka meeting next week.
Speaking before his departure for the series of meetings to be held between November 13 and 19, Mr Miller said: "The road map now known as 'Action Agenda' has been 95 per cent completed, though not without thorny issues yet to be resolved.
"There are however indications that APEC members have the will to resolve these problems in order to make the Osaka Leaders Meeting a success.
"I am pretty confident that we can finish it off by the time our leaders meet in Osaka. So be prepared to be pleasantly surprised by the scope and openness of the package of the Action Agenda which will be unveiled in Osaka.
"Apart from a comprehensive Action Agenda, APEC leaders will also announce at their meeting their initial actions (once known as 'downpayment') recently taken or to be implemented very soon on liberalisation and facilitation of trade and investment, to demonstrate its will to lead the process of global liberalisation by example, rather than to establish another trade bloc or free trade area."
Mr Miller will attend the senior officials get-together on November 13 and 14, then accompany the Secretary for Trade and Industry, Mr Chau Tak-hay, to the seventh APEC Ministerial Meeting on November 16 and 17.
He will be special assistant to the Financial Secretary, Mr Donald Tsang, to the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting to be held in Osaka on November 19.
The second Economic Leaders Meeting at Bogor last November set an unqualified goal of free trade and investment in the Asia Pacific region by 2010 and 2020.
Leaders also instructed ministers and senior officials to devise a road map for achieving the free trade goal for their consideration this year at the third Economic Leaders Meeting in Osaka.
Member economies of APEC are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and the United States.
End/Saturday, November 11, 1995