APEC making it easier, faster, cheaper to do business

APEC has made a good start towards achieving its aspirational goal of improving the ease of doing business across the Asia-Pacific region by 25% by 2015, according to Dr Takashi Omori, chair of APEC’s Economic Committee.

APEC has been working with member economies to make it cheaper, faster and easier to do business in the region in five key areas: starting a business, getting credit, enforcing contracts, trading across borders and dealing with permits.

An assessment shows APEC is making good progress toward the 5% interim improvement target by 2011. APEC’s improvement in the five areas between 2009 and 2010 was 2.8%, exceeding a pro rata benchmark of 2.5%, the assessment says.

Although the assessment is good news, APEC must push ahead with assisting economies to carry out further regulatory reform to improve the environment for businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, trading around the region, Dr Omori said.

“Promising progress has been reported in the areas that the Economic Committee is directly responsible for,” Dr Omori said.

“Although APEC is making good overall progress toward the interim target, achieving the 25 percent by 2015 will require considerably more work,” he said.

The Economic Committee and APEC’s independent research arm, the Policy Support Unit, conducted the interim assessment based on the World Bank’s Doing Indicators data. The assessment has been presented to APEC senior officials in Honolulu, and is