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Hosted by the Philippines, the 1996 APEC Chair, the second Senior Officials Meeting will be tasked to review work progress in the preparation of the individual action plans by APEC member economies, basing on the format agreed at the first senior officials meeting held in February, for implementing the Osaka Action Agenda in respect of trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation.
Another major task will be to prepare for the APEC Trade Ministers Meeting which will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, in July for APEC member economies to exchange views on the agenda of the World Trade Organisation Singapore Ministerial Conference in December.
The second Senior Officials Meeting will be preceded by a series of meetings including those of the Expert Group on Mutual Recognition Arrangements on Food Products, the Tariff Database Task Force, the Sub-committee on Customs Procedures, the Sub-committee on Standards and Conformance, the Expert Group on Government Procurement, the Economic Committee, and the Committee on Trade and Investment. The various APEC fora will report to the Senior Officials Meeting.
After the second Senior Officials Meeting and the Trade Ministers Meeting in Christchurch in July, APEC will hold the third Senior Official Meeting in August and the fourth Senior Officials Meeting in October before this year's Ministerial Meeting
and Economic Leaders Meeting in November.
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
1996 voter registration to close on June 1
The 1996 voter registration exercise will close on June 1, a spokesman for the Registration and Electoral Office (REO) said today (Sunday).
In order to update the register, he said, REO had since April made enquiries in relation to some 46,000 electoral records which had been identified as possibly outdated.