The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is taking steps to ensure that member-economies uniformly embrace controls on traded goods whose misuse could pose a security risk while upholding legitimate business between importers and exporters.
“The production of goods such as information and communications technology, industrial chemicals, and marine, avionics and aerospace components is a major source of growth and job creation in the APEC region but must be properly regulated to ensure that they are traded for legitimate commercial purposes only,” said Muthafa Yusof, Malaysia’s Strategic Trade Controller during a recent APEC workshop in Kuala Lumpur on strategic trade management.
Noting that there was still considerable unevenness in developing and applying strategic trade management regimes, Yusof said there was a need to ensure that safeguards are coherent and effective across economies to reduce disruptions to trade, “whether they are a terrorist attack or administrative bottlenecks, which could inflict great costs to businesses that depend on efficient regional supply chains.”
Enhancing awareness of the importance of a secure trading environment can be done through the sharing of best practices among government officials, and enlisting the help of the private sector to navigate challenges to their implementation, noted Peter Cheah, chair of the APEC market access group.
“These are priority focuses within APEC that will ultimately contribute to more reliable supply chains and increase economic activity,” he added.
Photo: Elsie esq.
