Griffith Asia Institute\u2019s APEC Study Centre represented Australia at the 12-13 May APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference (ASCCC17) held in Hanoi, Vietnam, this year\u2019s APEC host country. ASCCC17 was convened in conjunction with the Senior APEC Officials Meeting in the run-up to the APEC economies Leaders\u2019 Meeting in Vietnam in November.<\/p>\n
APEC economies account for sixty per cent of world GDP, and economic growth in the region is yet again expected to exceed world growth. The latest economic forecasts were released during the meetings, predicting economic growth for APEC close to 4 per cent in 2017 and 2018, up from the 3.5 per cent growth achieved last year, reflecting a rebound in world trade.<\/p>\n
Expansion of international trade in goods and services has driven economic growth in the Asia-Pacific since the 1994 APEC Bogor declaration that called for free trade and investment in the region. Despite this original goal, APEC has predominantly focussed on promoting international trade rather than foreign investment. Yet the APEC agenda has also broadened significantly over time to encompass factors other than international trade and investment, in particular business facilitation and economic and technical cooperation, to intensify integration within the region.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s ASCCC centred on a wide range of interesting economic issues, including trade policy, human resource development, technological innovation, the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises, labour mobility, inclusive growth, and the future of APEC itself.<\/p>\n
APEC Study Centre Director Professor Tony Makin\u2019s presentation highlighted the degrees of difficulty in achieving greater economic integration in the region. Notwithstanding the scuttling of the original Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) by President Trump, increasing integration via goods and services markets has tended to face less resistance from governments than heightened integration stemming from cross-border flows of the key inputs to production – capital and labour. And of these, it is considerably harder to liberalise labour flows across country borders than capital flows.<\/p>\n
In other words, while achieving greater economic integration via increased trade in goods and services had been a challenge, a bigger challenge has been, and will continue to be, achieving greater integration via foreign investment flows where political resistance is higher. And an even greater challenge is increasing regional integration via enhanced labour mobility.<\/p>\n
Professor Makin referred to the case of tourism in APEC where trade, investment and labour mobility all influence that industry\u2019s viability. Tourism is growing strongly within the burgeoning services sectors of many APEC economies as many of them mature and restructure. Tourism growth in APEC exceeds world tourism growth and accounts for just under 3 per cent of GDP in APEC GDP as a whole, though is significantly higher for Hong Kong SAR (8 %), Mexico (7%), Singapore (5%), Thailand (7%) and Vietnam (7%).
\nThe industry is set to grow strongly well into the future with the World Travel and Tourism Council predicting visitor numbers to the region will rise from around 412 million to 672 million in the next decade. Employment in tourism in APEC economies is expected to grow from around 48 million jobs to close to 60 million jobs in a decade.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, there was slight contraction in tourism employment share in Australia and Canada during the resources boom due to Dutch disease effects. In Australia\u2019s case, this was because stratospheric prices received for our commodity exports, especially for coal and iron ore, appreciated the exchange rate which worsened the competitiveness of the tourism sector at the time.<\/p>\n
A major study undertaken for APEC (\u201cDeveloping the Tourism Workforce of the Future in the APEC Region\u201d) authored by Griffith academics Andreas Chai, Char-Lee Moylen and Kate Hutchings and others highlighted a number of international barriers, most notably barriers to international worker flows due to restrictive visa requirements and immigration policies.<\/p>\n
Other challenges facing the tourism industry included skills development, skills recognition across borders, staff retention, and the seasonal nature of work in parts of the industry. Improved training opportunities for tourism employees in APEC economies, especially for those working in small and medium sized enterprises, would help meet these challenges, strengthen tourism, and thereby further enhance economic integration in the region.<\/p>\n
Article written by Professor Tony Makin,\u00a0Director APEC Study Centre, Griffith University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Griffith Asia Institute\u2019s APEC Study Centre represented Australia at the 12-13 May APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference (ASCCC17) held in Hanoi, Vietnam, this year\u2019s APEC host country. ASCCC17 was convened in conjunction with the Senior APEC Officials Meeting in the run-up to the APEC economies Leaders\u2019 Meeting in Vietnam in November. APEC economies account for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":3382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[578,401],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apec-2017","tag-professor-tony-makin"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Jill Moriarty","yoast_head":"\n