Strengthening Economic Legal Infrastructure - Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

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Strengthening Economic Legal Infrastructure

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The Strengthening Economic Legal Infrastructure (SELI) Coordinating Group encourages continuing regulatory and institutional reform, particularly by building the capacity and skills of individuals in the area of economic legal infrastructure, including regulatory and institutional reforms, and corporate governance. It also works to improve the capacity of legal institutions and government agencies in applying and enforcing rules on corporations and competition.

During the 1999 APEC New Zealand process, discussion focused on strengthening the market function in view of the 1997 Asian economic crisis. As a concrete step for strengthening the market function, a roadmap was endorsed at the APEC Ministerial Meeting in 1999. In 2000 the Symposium on Economic Legal Infrastructure was held in Indonesia where the Cooperation Framework for APEC's SELI was developed. The Coordinating Group was formally established as an informal meeting in 2001.

As a result of the debate on the possible expansion of the Osaka Action Agenda (OAA) in 2002, SELI was incorporated into the OAA as a new chapter. SELI was envisaged to contribute to sustainable economic growth by enhancing transparency and predictability in the investment-related business sector.

In 2007 Senior Officials agreed that the reporting lines for SELI move from the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) to the Economic Committee (EC). The formal transition will be made in time for the first Senior Officials Meeting and related meetings in 2008. Nonetheless, SELI continues to report to the CTI on their trade and investment work and coordinate their activities as appropriate.

The APEC SELI Coordinating Group is a sub-forum of the APEC Economic Committee (EC) and has been chaired by Japan since its establishment. The SELI Coordinating Group members meet biannually in conjunction with the first and third APEC Senior Officials' Meetings.

Achievements

The Reporting Mechanism on SELI
Following the expansion of the OAA, an annual voluntary progress report on strengthening economic and legal infrastructure in each APEC economy was initiated. The reports contain annual progress and future plans for strengthening economic and legal infrastructure in member economies. The report is flexible enough to allow each economy to report on relevant topics that fall under the SELI Menu of Options in the areas of corporate law, competition law and capacity and institution building. This flexibility is crucial given the diverse range of legal structures and the differing levels of development and institutional reform among member economies.

Major Capacity Building Projects

The third Training Course on Competition Policy, jointly organized with the Competition Policy Deregulation Group, was held in Singapore on 1-3 August 2007. The themes of the training course were "Competition Policy and SMEs" and "Effective Implementation of Competition Policy and Law."

Seminars on fighting corruption and ensuring transparency were held (under the auspices of Australia) in Ha Noi and Manila, on 12-13 January and 16-17 January 2006 respectively. This self-funded capacity building project was aimed at improving the technical expertise of officials.

Self-funded workshops on strengthening private commercial alternative dispute resolution (ADR) were held in Bangkok and Beijing, on 15-16 June and 19-20 June 2006 respectively. The workshops, which were organized by Australia, were aimed at officials with specific technical expertise and covered issues such as effective dispute avoidance and best practices in solving international commercial disputes through mediation and arbitration.

Sharing Experiences in APEC Economies on Strengthening the Economic Legal Infrastructure, was on 6-7 March 2007 held in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. The seminar aimed to facilitate information-sharing on policy direction for market-oriented economic reform and specific policy tools, such as model laws and training programs in a third country, based upon the experience of strengthening the economic legal infrastructure in Viet Nam and other economies;
Undertaken jointly with the Competition Policy and Deregulation Group (CPDG) the APEC Training Course on Competition Policy was conducted in 2005-2006 to train staff from member economies' competition policy authorities.

Current Activities

At the last SELI meeting on 24 February 2008 in Lima, Peru

SELI will continue to improve its reporting mechanism in consultation with the Economic Committee (EC) in light of the EC's new mandate to focus on structural reform. SELI's new mechanism should avoid duplication of reporting from member economies and ensure added value;
Members expressed the importance of continuous improvement of rules, systems and institutions that apply to commercial and corporate activities which will help facilitate investment and enhances confidence among businesspeople and investors. As effective and reliable economic and legal infrastructure being a condition of cross-border investment, it is essential that SELI interact closely with ABAC.

Future initiatives under consideration include:

Japan proposed a project proposal on Survey and Workshop on Strengthening the Economic Legal Infrastructure for Regional Economic Integration. Since structural reform is recognized as one of the significant elements of regional economic integration, this survey will highlight how to promote strengthening the economic legal infrastructure, especially focusing on commercial/company law, bankruptcy law and accounting system.
Viet Nam proposed a project to train trainers on strengthening economic legal infrastructure in APEC. This training course's key objectives are to: (1) help developing economies build capacity on economic legal infrastructure by training lecturers/teachers at university level which subsequently will pass the knowledge to younger generations; and (2) to enhance APEC works on economic legal infrastructure.