Financial Expert Expects APEC Member Economies to Embrace Cebu Action Plan

Lapu-Lapu City — A financial expert on Thursday predicted that member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) would adopt the Cebu Action Plan (CAP) because it will boost growth and improve efficiency in government spending.

As finance ministers and representatives of the private sector hammered the CAP for signing on Friday, issues on the readiness of APEC members to adopt short-term deliverables were raised.

Although the Cebu Action Plan is not mandatory, APEC members will implement it because it is good for them, said Sanjeev Gupta, Acting Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Gupta said that in the current global environment, growth rates in the emerging markets are slowing down and world economy has not picked up after the financial crisis a few years ago.

“Clearly, it is in the interest of all the counties to implement these reforms because they would be good for growth, they (reforms) are good at generating more revenue, and improving the efficiency in spending,” he said.

“And without any pressure, they would implement CAP because in the end, it would generate some positive outcomes.”

The IMF official also noted that the action plan is a way of presenting a path for governments to pursue different policies, which would improve the efficiency of spending.

There were a number of ideas that were presented and discussed during Thursday’s meeting on the CAP, which will go a long way in meeting its intended goals, he said.

“For example, if one were to focus on the efficiency of public investment and you were to focus on strengthening some of the key weaknesses, which have been identified for some of the APEC economies, this would lead to an improvement of the efficiency of spending,” he added.

The CAP, a development roadmap drafted by the Philippines, will be formally launched on Friday, following a series of meetings and workshops involving senior officials of finance ministries across the Asia-Pacific region.

Financial integration, fiscal reforms and transparency, financial resilience, and infrastructure development and financing are the four pillars of the Cebu Action Plan. (PCOO)