Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the World Bank East Asia Pacific Regional Agribusiness Trade & Investment Conference, 30 Jul 09

Welcome Remarks by Mr Lee Yi Shyan Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower at the World Bank East Asia Pacific Regional Agribusiness Trade & Investment Conference on 30 July 2009, 8:50am at the Holiday Inn Atrium

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning.

It is a great pleasure to join you this morning at the First World Bank East Asia-Pacific Regional Agribusiness Trade & Investment Conference. Let me add my warm welcome to all participants including APEC, World Bank, and private sector delegates.

APEC 2009 and Regional Economic Integration (REI)

This conference, entitled “Agro-enterprises Without Borders”, fits aptly with our theme for APEC 2009, “Sustaining Growth, Connecting the Region”.

As you may know, APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade met in Singapore last week.They renewed their commitment towards accelerating regional economic integration. Regional Economic Integration, or REI, is APEC’s raison d’être. Through REI, APEC aims to make it easier, faster and cheaper for businesses to operate in the Asia-Pacific region.

APEC has always been at the forefront of trade & investment liberalisation.Beyond trade and investment liberalisation “at the border”, we are focusing on two more issues this year : (a) improving the business and regulatory environment “behind the border and; (b) enhancing trade logistics “across borders”.

Integration “at the border” is what we are all familiar with.It has to do with reducing tariffs on merchandise trade, and facilitating cross-border services.Since its establishment in 1989, APEC has made significant improvements in this area. Member economies have reduced average tariffs in the region from 16.9% in 1989 to 5.5% in 2004.To reduce compliance costs further, we are undertaking steps this year to further simplify documents and procedures relating to Rules of Origins.

“Behind the border” initiatives aim to improve the business and regulatory environment through structural reform. This year, APEC has, in consultation with the business community as well as the World Bank, identified five priority areas of regulatory reform to improve the domestic business environment. They are “starting a business”, “dealing with permits”, “trading across borders”, “enforcing contracts” and “getting credit”. APEC will set measurable targets in these areas and put in place a capacity-building programme for member economies that are doing well in each of the five areas to share their experiences and best practices.

For “across borders”, APEC is taking steps to promote seamless connectivity of supply chains. This is particularly important to the food industry as the movement of perishable food products along the supply chain needs to be fast, secure and efficient. Given the importance of a reliable and efficient supply chain, APEC officials have been working with businesses and academics to identify key chokepoints in regional supply chains, so that there actions can be taken to make them more seamless.

There are of course many other areas that can be worked on to promote this borderless environment in the APEC region including harmonisation of standards, protection of intellectual property rights, investment facilitation, and even competition policy.

Relevance of APEC

Other than its focus on regional economic integration, APEC has always tried to be responsive to the issues of the day.For example, when food safety issues came into the limelight about two years ago, APEC established the Food Safety Cooperation Forum (FSCF) for building robust food safety systems and harmonisation of food standards.

More recently, in the context of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, APEC responded promptly by initiating discussions on trade financing and discussing inclusive and sustainable growth. We hope that our ability to respond to current issues will allow us to be better able to help businesses cope with their impacts.

Singapore’s Agribusiness Industry

Singapore is not a major food producer, but we aspire to play an active role in facilitating the agri-commodity trade in the region.With the shift of global consumption and production patterns to the Asia Pacific region, Singapore’s role in the global agri-trade has extended beyond oil and rubber, to grains, edible oils, oil seeds, forestry products, coffee, cocoa, sugar and cotton. In total, 54 agri-commodities traders are based in Singapore. Annually, these firms trade about US$70 billion worth of agricultural products across a wide range of commodity clusters.

Many of these companies have even moved beyond trading functions to include operations in marketing, trade finance, shipping and shared-services operations in Singapore. Our well-established trade infrastructure, backed by our financial, logistics, and shipping industries, our pro-business environment, political and economic stability, efficient legal system, and highly-qualified workforce, are key reasons for companies choosing Singapore as the nerve centre for their regional operations. We look forward to working with you if you are contemplating new regional operations in Singapore.

Conclusion

On this note, I would like to wish all of you a fruitful conference.

Thank you.