Private sector's role in ensuring success of trade facilitation deal: Miti
Published on: Saturday, September 20, 2014
Kuala Lumpur: KUALA LUMPUR: The private sector in the region must assume its equally important role in ensuring the success of trade facilitation agreement, says the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.Its Secretary-General, Datuk Dr Rebecca Sta Maria, said the private sector, including the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CACCI), should lobby through their various governments to have this very important agreement."To a large extent, what happened at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) occurred at a very governmental level and we did not see a very strong push from the private sector.ADVERTISEMENT "It was pretty much the governments negotiating with their own national interests, driven by political interest rather than business interest," she said during her presentation at the 28th CACCI Conference here Friday.Sta Maria said the trade facilitation agreement that Malaysia had worked out with the WTO was wrapped in a good package because it was tied to not just the facilitation aspect, but also the technical assistance and capacity building.She said the ones that would suffer when a trade facilitation agreement did not go through would be the exporters, traders and industries in the less developed countries."This is because that important component of technical assistance and capacity building, that were supposed to facilitate and grow trade, was stuck at the multilateral level," she said.ADVERTISEMENT On the creation of free trade zones, she said, the logistics chain must also be streamlined for the whole country to benefit from their existence.Giving an example, she said, while Malaysia has first-class ports such as Northport and Westport, the roads connecting the factories to the ports must be equally good.
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"We have looked into this issue and it will be tackled under the 11th Malaysia Plan," she said.The three-day conference, themed "Beyond 2020: Asia-Pacific as an Engine for Sustainable Growth", which commenced Wednesday, provides a platform for promoting the vital role of the businessmen in the region, increasing regional business interaction and enhancing regional economic growth. – Bernama