Senior Officials from the 21 APEC member economies concluded their two-day meeting Tuesday afternoon, during which they started the ball rolling for APEC 2001.

The meeting was chaired by Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya. Wang told the press after the meeting that the SOM made an overall assessment of the role and future direction of APEC as well as the current environment it faces, including the latest macro-economic developments.

They also discussed trade and investment liberalization, economic and technological cooperation and the new economy, he said.

On trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, Wang said, the senior officials committed work for an early launch of the World Trade Organization new round negotiations on a balanced and sufficiently broad-based agenda.

They stressed the need for concrete capacity building programs to help APEC members implement WTO agreements, Wang said, adding that the senior officials also called for the early admission of China to the WTO.

The senior officials expressed confidence in the long-term economic growth prospects of the Asia Pacific region despite of uncertainties over growth in some economies.

They emphasized that APEC should exchange views on macro-economic policy, so as to create a favorable environment for a sustained development of the regional economy, he said.

Wang noted that the participants reaffirmed their efforts to achieve the Bogor Goals for free trade and investment by 2010 and 2020 for developed and developing economies respectively through the implementation of Individual Action Plan (IAP).

Many developing members called for more substantial progress in economic and technological cooperation among APEC members, so as to raise their capability to deal with the challenge of globalization, he noted.

The senior officials agreed to establish a special working group to outline the purpose and principles for the development of information technology and e-commerce in the Asia Pacific region, on the basis of the Action Agenda on the New Economy set forth last year.

Chinese senior officials also briefed the meeting on the arrangements of a series of future APEC meetings to be held in China in 2001, including the high level meeting of human capacity building in May, the meeting of ministers responsible for trade in June, and finance ministers' meeting in September and other related meetings.

(People's Daily 02/13/2001)