Chairman predicted highlights in the 1st APEC ECBA Forum

The 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum, which will be held on June 15-16, 2004 at Yantai Shangdong, has attracted attentions from both government agencies and private companies around the world. Despite its international participation, what else are the features of the 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum? With this question, we interviewed the Chairman of the 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum, Director of the China International E-Commerce Centre---Mr. Liu Junsheng.

Practical and Enterprise-oriented

According to Mr. Liu, the forum has been well-prepared and now everything is ready. Quests from government institutions, organizations and renowned enterprises such as the State Administration of Foreign Exchange Information Centre, TradeCard, Bolero and KTNET have confirmed their attendance to the forum.

Mr. Liu told the reporter that the APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance has been dedicated to the promotion of the "Digital APEC Strategy" since its establishment and offered proposition to the development of e-commerce and paperless trade among APEC member economies from the enterprises' angle. Therefore, the 1st APEC ECBA forum will be focused on the practical application of transnational paperless trade between enterprises and defines its theme as "E-Enterprise---The Cornerstone of E-Commerce Development". The forum is going to convey the policy needs of IT and traditional enterprises for developing e-commerce and paperless trade to representatives from APEC member economies. Meanwhile, the forum will also analyze the preferential policies with enterprises on the purpose of accelerating the e-commerce development.

The 1st APEC ECBA Forum has also invited legal experts and senior judges from the Supreme Court to probe the legal practices in solving e-commerce disputes and tackling credit guarantee. Enterprises will be able to get authorized consultation on obstacles they encountered in the e-commerce process.

progressing with world-famous enterprises

As a result of the revision of the Foreign Trade Law, Liu introduced, the foreign trade process has changed dramatically. For small and medium enterprises in the commerce and trade circle, how to handle the complicated world market and expand the business penetration through IT application will be a subject debated in the forum. Renowned IT companies like HP, Bolero etc. will showcase their up-to-date e-commerce solutions such as supply chain and logistics management to enterprises participated in the forum.

Moreover, the forum constructs a platform for the communication and exchange between traditional and IT enterprises, helps them catch the developing trends of technologies and applications related to e-commerce to avoid duplicated investment in hardware and software.

New stage of paperless trade in Asia-Pacific region

The APEC Ministerial Meeting worked out the e-commerce action blueprint on October 10 1998 in Kuala Lumpur and set the development objectives of paperless trade in Asia-Pacific region, That is--- to achieve paperless trade in developed countries by 2005 and in developing countries by 2010, to achieve full-scale paperless trade among APEC member economies by 2015.China acceded in the APEC Steering Group Conference as Vice Chairman in February 2004 at San Diego, Chile, the conference formally ratified the 1st APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance Forum as a part of the 2004-2006 paperless trade action plan. The opening of the forum, Mr. Liu introduced, marks the official launch of 2004-2006 action plan.

The 1st APEC ECBA Forum has gotten positive response from PAA members, quests form Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea will make paper presentation during the forum. APEC and PAA member economies will share the common understanding on the application of e-commerce and the promotion of global paperless trade.