The crisis plunging the world into a recession is to dominate an APEC summit in Peru this weekend, along with efforts to firm up an international response to the turbulence.
The Thursday to Sunday gathering of leaders of the APEC forum will also serve as the swansong multilateral summit for US President George W. Bush, who leaves office in January.
Bush, and 20 other heads of state and government from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, will be attending the high-security event.
Organizers said the leaders — whose countries account for half the world’s trade and nearly 60 percent of its GDP — will be addressing the economic and financial crisis.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to give a speech on how the crisis has affected APEC’s priorities, while the presidents of Mexico and Colombia, Felipe Calderon and Alvaro Uribe, were to examine the implications of the crisis for Latin America and the world.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) was to concentrate on his country’s quest for sustainable development — an issue that has taken on greater importance as Chinese growth slides, even as the country becomes the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases.
ASIA-PACIFIC
The APEC summit is to be preceded by days of meetings in Lima by ministers and other officials looking to promote trade and other issues in the Asia-Pacific bloc, which stretches from Australasia to Russia.
In all, there will be more than 3,600 delegates from APEC’s 21 countries in attendance, Luis Giampietri, the chairman of the APEC Peru High-Level Commission, said in a statement.
The US, Japanese and Chinese contingents will be the biggest, counting 900, 500 and 300 officials respectively, he said.
“This is a summit that is gathering the most attendants throughout APEC history,” Giampietri said.
FOOD AND COMMODITIES
Javier Kapsoli, the head of the economic and social affairs unit of Peru’s economy ministry, said at an APEC finance ministers’ meeting early this month that matters related to prices for food and commodities would be addressed, along with proposed reforms of capital markets and improved government spending.
Bilateral meetings and areas of friction among some of APEC’s members were also to be closely watched.
Rising tensions between the US and Russia have prompted alarm and a shifting of geopolitical positions unseen since the end of the Cold War.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was to follow his APEC appearance with a visit to Brazil and to Venezuela. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been wooing Moscow to become its main military sponsor as he increases his antagonism towards Washington.
NORTH KOREA
The problem of North Korea and its nuclear program was also a potential point of discussion between officials from South Korea, Japan, the US, Russia and China.
Host country Peru, meanwhile, is under fire from neighbor Bolivia for going it alone in pursuing a free trade agreement with Europe instead of negotiating within a South American bloc, the Community of Andean Nations.
Peru’s principal union, the General Workers’ Confederation, backed by the main opposition party, has called for a mass protest on Friday to “reject the presence of Bush, who bears responsibility for the financial crisis.”
Other leftwing demonstrations are also planned.
Security, though, promises to be extraordinarily tight — even tighter than at the last APEC summit in Australia, when a fake convoy transporting a team of TV comics, one of whom was dressed up as Osama bin Laden, was waved through police checkpoints to the official venue.
A total of 110,000 police and 90,000 soldiers are to be mobilized across Peru. In the capital, consecutive rings of security will surround the summit venue, delegates’ hotels and the defense ministry.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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