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BY LEIAO GEREGA
Discussions on border barriers concerning PNG and other APEC economies has continued over the last 30 years and is not something that will happen overnight, says executive director of the APEC Secretariat in Singapore, Dr Alan Bollard.
“We are pushing ahead to identify and work to review the traditional border barriers, that means tariffs and barriers behind the borders so there’ll be a report on structural reform coming out which will go into some of that,” said Dr Bollard in explanation of issues such as the increasing tarrifs in PNG.
Structural reforms as mentioned by Dr Bollard, is about using policy to remove barriers that stand in the way of people and economic opportunity in the context of a market economy.
The structural reform agenda is organised into three pillars which includes, developing more open, transparent and competitive markets, deepen the participation of all segments of society and establish sustainable social policies.
Dr Bollard said an example would be a case study from PNG on how to handle state and enterprise reforms adding that “that’s typical of what we were trying to do in APEC were looking for best practices from around the region and we put principals out of all of that”.
He said for more upcoming barriers, they are looking into testing digital ones and not just physical ones, “and we hope to have some announcements from ministers on moving them forward”.
Dr Bollard said this year’s various app innovations highlighted during APEC meetings, such as the APEC biluminous app and block-chain technology voting data base.
“That’s what we are seeing for leap-frogging on technologies where we can use those for remote areas,” he said.
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