The Ingenieur Vol. 65 Water Power | Page 42

INGENIEUR Transparent and improved communications; Collaboration and engagement across the APEC platform and with various stakeholders; ●● Competitiveness in services through human and institutional capacity building and increased participation of developing member economies; and ●● Cros s - sectoral and sector- specific approaches. In line with the 1995 Osaka Action Agenda,  the 2000 Policy Framework for Work on Services, and the 2009 APEC Principles for Cross-Border Trade in Services, taking into account individual economies’ situations, APEC affirms the importance of the following strategic directions: ●● Transparency of laws, regulations, and administrative procedures;  ●● Progressively reducing restrictions to services trade and investment, including unnecessary localization requirements; ●● Non-discrimination between domestic and foreign service suppliers; ●● Good regulatory practices and effective competition policy; ●● Facilitating the mobility of   ser vice suppliers and business persons; and ●● Supporting capacity building to develop the ability of economies to competitively supply services. The 2015 ASCF will play a pivotal role in fully achieving the Bogor Goals, in providing a common strategic direction and in promoting coherence in APEC’s work on services. The ASCF will ensure that APEC’s multi-fora and multi-stakeholder services agenda will remain dynamic and responsive to economic, market, and technological developments of each APEC member economy. ●● ●● The Way Forward APEC members have agreed to develop a strategic and long-term APEC Services Competitiveness Roadmap in 2016 with the adoption of a concerted set of actions and mutually agreed targets to be achieved by 2025. The process of drafting the Roadmap will begin with discussion of the elements of the Roadmap followed by deliberations on actions and mutually agreed targets. The Roadmap will, among others: 6 40 VOL - MARCH 2016 VOL65 55JANUARY JUNE 2013 Build on APEC’s past and on-going work on services; ●● Promote increased and strengthened APEC cross-fora dialogue and collaboration  such as joint meetings, projects, and initiatives; ●● Pursue close collaboration with ABAC, PECC, and other stakeholders through regular Public-Private Dialogues on Services; ●● Broaden multi-stakeholder engagement through the APEC Virtual  Knowledge Centre  on Services – a virtual knowledgesharing platform on information and best practices of services-related policies and programmes of APEC; ●● Foster exchange of good regulatory pr ac tic e s and promote ef fec tive competition policy; ●● Seek better ways to produce servicesrelated statistics and increase the number of APEC economies with indices for measuring the regulatory environment in services including by providing capacity building and exploring the development of an APEC index, taking into account, as appropriate, existing indices maintained by other fora such as the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development; ●● Regularly organise, through the relevant APEC Working Groups and Committees, discussion fora among services regulators; officials responsible for trade, investment, and competition policies; and the private sector; and ●● Leverage par tnerships with regional and global bodies such as the World Trade Organization, United Nations Bodies, International Trade Centre, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and D evelo p ment , t he Ec o no mic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, the Asian Development Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank, and the World Bank, among other institutions, to implement the Roadmap, and avoid duplication and ensure coherence with existing initiatives. The desired outcomes of the ASCF are: ●● Increased services value-adding capacity of APEC economies; ●●