[asia-apec 1085] APEC Small and Medium Enterprises Meeting - GATT Watchdog

[Gatt Watchdog]

GATT Watchdog
PO Box 1905
Christchurch
Aotearoa/New Zealand
                       
                           MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE
23 April 1999
APEC Small & Medium Enterprises Meeting; The Meeting No-one Really Wants To
Host 

Government efforts to be seen to support small and medium businesses through
hosting next week's APEC Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial meeting
(SME) in Christchurch are a cynical public relations stunt in an election
year, says GATT Watchdog. Documents secured under the Official Information
Act confirm a less than lukewarm attitude from Cabinet and Treasury towards
holding the SME meeting.  

"It's an attempt to convince small businesses - and the public - that APEC is
not really a vehicle for promoting the interests of big business and is good
for them. This denies APEC's history and the direction of its work programme
which has always been shaped and influenced by larger private sector free
marketeers, especially the representatives of transnational corporations, at
the expense of small and medium sized businesses.  It denies the fact that the
government has used its commitments to APEC - a non-binding voluntary process
- to justify unilaterally stripping away protection from local manufacturers
and producers that many of our major trading partners still maintain. And it
is all part of its attempt to massage APEC's image," says Aziz Choudry, a GATT
Watchdog spokesman.

Chile had originally proposed that it would host the 1999 SME meeting in
Santiago, but then changed its mind. For the past five years, the SME meetings
have taken place at the invitation of the host economy for APEC that year, but
New Zealand had not originally offered to host the SME.

"Holding this meeting is clearly a political stunt in an election year to
signal to local small businesses that the government cares about them.  Yet
the meetings will be "managed" in the hope that the government gets what it
wants - support for more of the same extremist free market measures which have
seen thousands of local small businesses and jobs wiped out.  All for the sake
of ideology." 

"New Zealand sent nobody to the 1996, 1997, or 1998 SMEs - so why the sudden
interest this year? The APEC SME programme has clearly never been a priority
for the New Zealand government, and indeed within APEC it has been big
business which has driven and benefitted from its agenda."

"The global free market programme that APEC promotes, and in which New Zealand
seeks to lead the world by example has decimated local small industries. In
Canterbury alone thousands of manufacturing jobs have already been sacrificed
on the altar of free trade.  Last May's Canterbury Development Corporation
report estimated that the economic impact of removing import tariffs from 2000
in the clothing and textile sector in Christchurch would be another 1330 job
losses, and nearly $32 million in lost wages."

Cabinet papers about the SME meeting express concern about the "need to
manage some risks associated with the SME work programme.  Elements of the
agenda are at odds with the Government's policy approaches e.g. initiatives
promoting concessional and export finance for SMEs.  Outcomes from the
Ministerial will accordingly need to be carefully managed."

Treasury is worried about the "risks associated with the promotion of industry
assistance policy outcomes which are at odds with existing policy settings".

"This does not reflect a government concerned with policies to support local
small industries and jobs.  It is more of an attempt to woo votes from a
sector which has been stripped of its support even while many of our major
trading partners - many of them APEC member economies - continue to offer a
range of subsidies and other supports including small business development
assistance packages," said Mr Choudry.

For further comment, contact Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog (03) 3662803;