Learning

Key messages and takeaways from Services and Structural Reform experts across the Asia Pacific.

The Service Sector

Harper discusses various aspects of competition policy in the service sector, highlighting its unique challenges and regulatory needs.

Managing the Process

In this part, Harper explains how the review was initiated and structured. Harper recounted receiving a request from the responsible minister to chair a committee of inquiry. The minister outlined the government’s intention to address specific concerns about supermarkets, such as fuel prices and market power, and to incorporate these issues into a broader competition policy review.

Recommendations

This section delves into the recommendations made by the 2015 Competition Policy Review in Australia. The discussion is structured around three main areas: competition policy, competition law, and competition institutions.

Setting Priorities in Competition Policy Reform

Harper explains the process of prioritizing recommendations. They focused on issues that were “crying out for attention” or could be addressed relatively easily, such as reforming pharmacy location and ownership rules and deregulating retail trading hours in certain states. 

2015 Competition Policy Review

This interview discusses the 2015 Competition Policy Review in Australia, led by Ian Harper. The review, often referred to as “Hilmer Mark Two,” was commissioned by the government nearly 20 years after the original Hilmer Review (The National Competition Policy Review) of the 1990s.

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Matthew Butlin

Good Regulatory Systems

Matthew Butlin, a long-term leader of regulatory reform in Australia, talks about issues in the design of good regulatory systems, especially the importance of coordination across objectives and agencies. 

Aaditya Mattoo

Digital Technologies and Policy Reforms

The World Bank’s Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific, Aaditya Mattoo, argues that diffusion of digital technologies and policy reforms in the services sector are posed to create opportunities and play an increasing role in the economic development of the region.

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Dr James Ding

Structural reform agenda

APEC Economic Committee Chair, Dr James Ding shares his thoughts on advancing the structural reform agenda in APEC.
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Markus Jelitto

Benefits of the reference paper

Markus Jelitto, Counsellor, Trade in Services Division, WTO. Markus talks about estimates of the impact of the WTO reference paper’s adoption.
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Markus Jelitto

Implementation

Marku’s remarks on how to implement the provisions of the paper.
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Bernard Hoekman

Beyond Dom Market

Bernard is Professor and Director, Global Economics at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, and a long term supporter of APEC. He talks about the value looking beyond the domestic market in the design of reform, and then a couple of other principles.
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Bernard Hoekman

Focus on how

One of Bernard’s key principles is on the ‘how’
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Bernard Hoekman

Small Firms

Bernard then talks about small firms.
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Basaria Tiara L Gaol

Benefits of the use of STRI

Remarks from Ibu Tiara, leader of the services group in the Trade Ministry in Jakarta. She talks about the application of the STRI to Indonesia, its results and recent movements in the index.
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Carmen Prado Wagner

What matters for mobile

Carmen Prado-Wagner, Senior Officer Economist in the Regulatory and Market Environment Division, International Telecommunication Union, ITU. Carmen Prado-Wagner from the ITU talking about what matters for mobile.
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Carmen Prado Wagner

ITU Data Hub

Carmen also mentions new work on data collection, another tool for our consideration, this time related to digital services.
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Ramonette Serafica

Reg Reforms and Positive Developments

Senior Research Fellow, Philippines Institute forDevelopment Studies (PIDS). Policy objectives in this sector concern productivity and growth in the context of trade, but there is always another interest and that is inclusion and the contribution of policy and institutions to that goal. Here are some remarks from Ramonette Serafica from the Philippines Instiute for Development Studies on that connection.

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Phumjit Sri-udomkajorn

Reg reforms and success factors

Phumjit Sri-udomkajorn, Researcher, Thailand Development Researcher Institute. Phumjit speaks about other aspects of regulatory reform, and also her assessment of drivers of success in reform.

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Intan Ramli

Good Regulatory Practice

Intan Ramli from ERIA talks about the benefits for services of the application of the principles of Good Regulatory Practice.

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Renee Hancher

2023 APEC Blueprint on GRP

Renee Hancher from USTR discusses why regulatory practice matters and outlines the scope of the 2023 APEC Blueprint on GRP.

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Basaria Tiara

Structural reform in Indonesia

Basaria Tiara L Gaol of the Ministry of Trade, Indonesia, discusses recent developments in structural reform in Indonesia and their implications for services trade and investment.

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John Drummond

Part 1: The APEC Index

John Drummond from the OECD reviews the challenges of setting policy priorities and the value of policy analysis tools, the APEC Index in particular.

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John Drummond

Part 2: Application of the APEC index

The OECD’s John Drummond provides concrete examples of the application of the APEC index.

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Research

Research documentation published under the Service and Structural Reform Project.
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Events

A number of events have been held to build capacity, increase understanding of relevant APEC fora, and built momentum for a further work program.
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About

This APEC cross-fora project aims to make services regulation and policy reform in favour of openness a central focus of APEC’s structural reform agenda.
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