The 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum have reached a compromise on the contentious question of revising its 1995 guideline for liberalizing trade and investment within the Pacific Rim by 2020.
According to government sources, the Osaka Action Agenda, which now simply calls for the APEC economies to "progressively reduce" import tariffs, will be rewritten to call for them to "progressively reduce" import tariffs "until the Bogor goal (of liberalizing trade and investment by 2002) is fully achieved."
The APEC economies have agreed, however, to retain basic principles for achieving the liberalization goal, such as "voluntarism" and "flexibility," in modifying the Osaka Action Agenda, the sources said.