Updates on negotiations for free trade agreement between Pacific Island Countries and Europe as well as between the islands and Australia and New Zealand go before the leaders of the Pacific today in Port Moresby.
Convening hours before the 46th annual Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit is due to open, Pacific members of the African, Caribbean and the Pacific bloc of countries are holding a one day session at a hotel near the country’s Jackson International Airport. All Forum member nations with the exception of Australia and New Zealand belong to the Pacific ACP group.
Forum host, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill is chairing today’s Pacific ACP Leaders summit, a day before he assumes the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum at the Leaders’ main plenary tomorrow (Wednesday) to be followed by their traditional Leaders’ retreat on Thursday at the up-market Grand Papua Hotel in downtown Port Moresby.
Fisheries and maritime surveillance is one of 5 items that are on the Summit agenda, as well as climate change and disaster risk management, alleged human right abuses in West Papua, Information Communications technology and cervical cancer.
In his brief to Pacific journalists covering the Forum in Papua New Guinea, Forum Secretariat adviser on trade and economic governance Shiu Raj said Pacific leaders would discuss updates on EPA (economic partnership agreement), PACER (Pacific Agreement for Closer Economic Relations) Plus and a proposed regional trade and investment arrangement with the United States.
“When Pacific ACP (PACP) Trade and Fisheries Ministers met on 17 July 2015 in Suva, Fiji, the Ministers endorsed in principle the findings from a joint study that was undertaken in 2014 in partnership with FFA (Forum Fisheries Agency) and PIDP (Pacific Islands Development Programme) that explored the prospects for a development oriented trade and investment arrangement with the U.S. modelled around what the U.S. has provided to the African and Caribbean regions in terms of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Caribbean basin Initiative (CBI),” Raj told Islands Business magazine.
“These arrangements have been instrumental in growing trade and investment between the regions and the U.S. and fostering private sector development. Discussions are ongoing in this area and expected to be a key agenda item during the next Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders (PICL) meeting. It should be noted that this initiative is very different from the EPA and PACER Plus as they are Free Trade Agreements which require reciprocity in terms of market access. The U.S. initiative will be similar to SPARTECA in terms of being a non-reciprocal trade arrangement but it is also proposed that the initiative covers trade in services and labour mobility, the key aspects which the Pacific can benefit from.”
In particular, Pacific Leaders will need to decide on next steps for EPA, given that the European Union had called for the suspension of negotiations for three years. Already Pacific Trade and Fisheries Ministers had wanted negotiations to continue, despite EU’s objections that differences in the fisheries and development chapters of EPA could not be bridged and a time out was required.
On PACER Plus which Forum member countries are negotiating with its two bigger and wealthier Forum members of Australia and New Zealand, leaders today will be updated on the progress of negotiations. At their recent intercessional negotiation meeting in Samoa last month, agreements have been reached on most of the chapters of the free trade agreement and the push is to finalise the legal text of the agreement by December this year.
Leaders will also be briefed on demands by Pacific NGOs that the legal text of PACER Plus be released for closer scrutiny.
Chief Trade Adviser for the Pacific Islands Dr Edwini Kessie said his office has already responded to the NGO’s requests and that plans are underway for a joint meeting with regional NGO representatives in December to take place either in PNG or in New Zealand.