Competition principles and policy in the APEC: How to proceed and link with WTO

Abstract

There is a growing consensus that competition-oriented policy framework would be instrumental in achieving the Bogor goal of trade and investment liberalization by 2010/2020. As of now, only eight economies have the experience of operating competition policy for more than a decade. Many emerging economies of the APEC have only begun to introduce competition policy. The Auckland APEC Leaders Meeting of 1999 adopted the APEC competition principles. It is a significant step forward, but more hard work lies ahead: the issue of developing specific and concrete work program to implement the competition principles within the APEC and how to put competition policy in the much broader context of a multilateral trading system. The paper maps out a specific strategy to move the competition policy agenda forward at the APEC and how to link to the WTO and identifies the sources of such value-added and makes a proposal in order to best utilize them.