This meeting of APEC Ministers and the 7th APEC Leaders' Meeting that follows it -- are taking place less than three months before the Third WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle. That WTO Conference is likely to produce important decisions that will determine the future course of global trade and investment liberalization. It will thus have an impact on APEC's agenda.

ASEAN remains committed to sustaining regional and global trade and investment liberalization. But it also insists on a greater balance in the agendas of both APEC and WTO. This means taking into account the concerns of their developing-country members. It includes building the capacity of the developing countries to participate in the global liberalization process in a way that gives them real benefits. More than half of APEC's member-economies, after all, are developing countries, accounting for the bulk of the population of the Asia-Pacific. The preponderance of developing-country members is even greater in WTO.

These countries will continue to take a positive view of trade and investment liberalization and give it more enthusiastic support only if they are able more fully to partake of its fruits. This includes their technical and organizational ability to do so.

ASEAN has a strong interest in seeing APEC continue to be a force for trade and investment liberalization not only in Asia-Pacific but in the world. But APEC can sustain this role only if it takes the lead in ensuring a more even sharing of benefits among its members. This means, for one thing, a greater balance between liberalization and what in APEC is known as economic and technical cooperation or ECOTECH. Only in this way can APEC maintain its full relevance to its developing member-economies.

This proposition ought to form an important message that these meetings of APEC Ministers and APEC Leaders will send out from Auckland to the rest of the world. It ought to be a cornerstone of APEC 2000, when one of ASEAN's members, Brunei Darussalam, takes on the challenge of leading APEC into the next millennium.

ASEAN itself has found it necessary to maintain this same balance, as it membership expanded over the past five years to include four of the world's least- developed countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam. At the regional level and at the bilateral level, ASEAN has extended technical assistance to its newest members -- in customs, standards and services, for example -- in order to enable them to catch up with the pace of regional economic liberalization. The ASEAN experience suggests that the benefits of regional integration must accrue to all if the process of liberalization is to be sustained. It suggests that the pace of integration can even be hastened without stress if a deliberate effort is undertaken to enhance the capacity of the less-developed members to take part.

Over the past year, ASEAN economies have begun the long climb back from the worst economic crisis that they have experienced since ASEAN's founding. Each member-country has taken policy initiatives and undertaken reform measures in order to return their economies to the road of growth. These steps have begun to take effect. But ASEAN as a region also reacted to the crisis in a way that confounded some popular predictions. Instead of sliding back into protectionism or slowing down regional economic integration, ASEAN decided, as a principal response to the crisis, to accelerate regional integration and strengthen regional cooperation.

The regional response is built on three important pillars: (a) faster and deeper regional economic integration and liberalization, (b) closer financial cooperation, and (c) addressing the social impact of the crisis.

At their Sixth Summit, held in Hanoi last December, ASEAN's leaders moved forward the completion of the ASEAN Free Trade Area from 2003 to the beginning of 2002. They announced the launching of a new round of negotiations on trade in services covering all modes of supply and all services sectors. They agreed to enhance the ASEAN Industrial Cooperation (AICO) scheme by liberalizing national equity requirements.

It should be noted that the ASEAN leaders made these decisions in the midst of the worst economic downturn that ASEAN has known. In so doing, they sent out a clear and substantive signal of ASEAN's strengthened commitment to regional economic integration.

In line with APEC's goal of free and open trade and investments by 2020 in the Asia-Pacific region, ASEAN has agreed that the ultimate target of AFTA should be zero tariffs. ASEAN is now deciding on the precise date to achieve it. In any case, it will be earlier than APEC's target date for developing countries.

Integrating ASEAN as an investment area and otherwise improving the region's investment climate have been an important ASEAN response to the economic downturn. ASEAN investors can now invest in the manufacturing sector in any member country and given national treatment, subject to certain exclusions, which shall be phased out by 2003. Non-ASEAN investors in the manufacturing sector can enjoy special privileges if they come in between now and the end of 2000. These privileges include tax exemptions or allowances, full foreign equity ownership, duty-free imports of capital goods, domestic market access, and at least 30-year leases for industrial land. They can also hire foreign personnel and enjoy speedy customs clearance. These privileges are additional to the incentives that each ASEAN country already offers to foreign investors.

A second pillar of ASEAN's response to the crisis has been closer cooperation in financial matters. A major component of this is the establishment of the ASEAN Surveillance Process. Under this scheme, ASEAN is developing an early warning system to keep track of macroeconomic trends and enable early detection of any threatening developments in a member's economy. Part of the process is the peer review, in which ASEAN ministers and their deputies exchange views on developments in their economies. They consult one another on measures that they are undertaking to strengthen their economies, mitigate the impact of the crisis, and jointly formulate policy responses to impending problems. Together with the early warning system, the review serves to guard against future crises by providing an opportunity to take early unilateral or collective action to counter potential disturbances. It also promotes closer coordination of macroeconomic policies and facilitates peer support and, in some cases, peer pressure for necessary economic and financial reforms. The first peer review was conducted early this year.

In an effort to further strengthen its financial system, ASEAN has agreed to adopt and implement sound international financial practices and standards. Capital markets will be deepened, particularly the bond market, to provide a wider variety of instruments with longer maturity and ample liquidity. ASEAN has resolved to improve corporate governance significantly. Learning its lesson from the crisis, ASEAN intends to ensure that capital account liberalization is properly sequenced so as to allow the freer flow of capital while cushioning the impact of sudden shifts in capital flows. This is part of the position that ASEAN's finance ministers have taken in calling for reforms in the international financial architecture.

The third pillar of the ASEAN response has been to resolve to minimize the social cost of the crisis. At the Sixth ASEAN Summit, the ASEAN leaders recognized that the financial crisis "has a social dimension, with the poor and vulnerable segments of our societies being the most adversely affected. In this regard, we will ensure that efforts to safeguard the interests of the poor form an integral part of our reform efforts."

ASEAN has established a Task Force on Social Safety Nets, which is now implementing the ASEAN Action Plan on Social Safety Nets. At the regional level, two projects on social safety nets are currently being worked out - one to develop methodologies for the rapid identification of localities and population groups that are most affected by economic downturns, and the other on the design and delivery of social safety net programs.

There seems to be a general consensus in the international community that the worst of the crisis is now behind ASEAN, albeit with a measure of caution. Some key indicators tend to support this cautious optimism.

ASEAN and its member-countries are determined that this time their growth is sustainable. This is why they are persisting in the necessary reforms. This is why they are calling for reforms in the international financial system. But they also know that they have to raise their level of competitiveness for the coming century. In today's world, this means acquiring the capacity to take fuller advantage of globalization and the wider scope for competition that it presumably provides. In today's world, this, in turn, requires the development of the relevant human skills and the human potential.

This is why in APEC and in WTO, as well as in ASEAN itself, the development of human resources and technical cooperation must take a central place. ASEAN trusts that this concern, and other interests of developing countries, are given the attention that they deserve. ASEAN hopes that APEC will give these concerns of its developing-country members a strong push in WTO and in its own activities.

Only thus can APEC maintain the balance that it must have if it is to retain the full commitment of all its participants.