Apec finance officials back Cebu Action Plan

The Philippines’ proposed measures to make Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) member-economies more financially integrated, transparent and resilient alongside fast-tracked infrastructure development have generated support at the end of the meeting of the group’s Senior Finance Officials in Bagac, Bataan last week.

While Apec’s finance officials were “very supportive” of the Cebu Action Plan, which will be up for approval by the group’s finance ministers in September during their meeting in Cebu, Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran admitted in a press conference on Friday that since Apec agreements were nonbinding, some members had reservations on some of the specific measures.

On the Cebu Action Plan’s financial integration pillar, some members said they were “not ready” to set up collateral agencies and credit information bureaus because they needed laws before they could create such institutions, Beltran disclosed.

“The long-term objective is to link collateral agencies and credit information bureaus, although some may not yet be ready to join this link,” he said.

Also, the proposed Cebu Action Plan is pushing for capital account liberalization, Beltran said, although he noted that this could be done only when the members’ respective domestic financial systems and regulations were tweaked to facilitate greater financial sector liberalization across the region.

As for the fiscal transparency pillar, the Cebu Action Plan is adopting the Open Government Partnership (OPG) initiative, the Finance official said. “We are encouraging other Apec members to also participate in OPG,” which entails opening up to the public data on revenues and expenditures, and budgets, he said.

Under the financial resiliency pillar, the Cebu Action Plan proposes a sovereign disaster risk finance facility to reduce the risks brought about by economic losses due to disasters and calamities.

Beltran noted that Apec member-economies were losing $165 billion yearly due to disasters. The Philippines, alone, loses an average of $1.7 billion to disasters and calamities every year.

To bolster infrastructure development across Apec, the Cebu Action Plan is also pitching the standardization of public-private partnership (PPP) contracts in the region that would put in place the risk-sharing and financing mix, on top of a roll out of an online knowledge management portal for PPP projects.