Ippei Yamazawa
Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University, Japan

APEC 2012 Meetings were successfully held in Vladivostok in September and we have got in recess for a while. The new IAPs by all 21 economies, together with Policy Support Unit’s Progress Reports and Dashboards have been published on the APEC’s website.

At 2010 APEC Yokohama, APEC Leaders conducted the mid-term review of their efforts for achieving the Bogor Goals and renewed their commitment for all 21 economies to continue their IAP process toward its final goals in 2020. We would like to call my fellow experts’ attention to this renewed IAP process and encourage you to closely monitor this process. We believe it is the role for us academics to monitor and advise our senior officials and their staffs to implement the IAPs effectively. Read more…

Ippei Yamazawa
Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University, Japan

2010 APEC Yokohama was completed three weeks ago with three major achievements, first the mid-term assessment of its Bogor target, second a concrete direction toward Free trade Area for the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), and third APEC’s growth strategy. The first two give us a future prospect for APEC’s main activity of Trade Investment Liberalization and Facilitation (TILF), while the last packages its new initiatives undertaken for the past decade in order to combat with changing economic environment in the region. Discussion has so far focused on TPP as a possible route to FTAAP but others seem to be missed since the Yokohama meetings. This short essay aims to discuss both the first agenda and continued TILF of the second. Read more…