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Logistics Services

About the Project

 

APEC economies were the first to recognize the importance of examining the role of essential services in continuing to ensure the flow of goods across borders in the region after the Covid-19 pandemic affected the world economy and international trade.   APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade highlighted this in their statement of June 2021, attaching an Annex on Services to Support the Movement of Essential Goods that mandated work for APEC on this topic with an annual update on progress.

In response to this directive, the APEC Group on Services carried out a two-year project on essential services during 2022 and 2023 under the leadership of Australia (and co-sponsored by Japan, New Zealand and the United States).  The project focused on logistics services as the core of essential services for trade, with the objective of identifying the challenges faced by logistics firms in carrying out their vital functions, along with the policies that APEC economies could adopt to help facilitate these operations, particularly during times of disruptions to trade.  The project developed an agreed definition of logistics-related services endorsed by APEC Ministers, and elaborated a set of APEC Non-Binding Guidelines on Logistics-related Services that Support the Movement of Essential Goods During a Public Health Emergency, which contain recommendations for policies that APEC members could put in place to positively impact logistics-related services during periods of crisis that affect trade.   These Guidelines appear in attachment to the APEC Ministerial Statement 2023.

 

A High-level Advisory Group comprising members from academia, international organizations and practitioners provided valuable guidance and insights during the work on the project. 

 

The numerous activities and outputs from this project have been gathered on this common webpage as a repository for future use and consultation by APEC officials and other interested stakeholders. They include: the official APEC Statements and Declarations addressing essential services and logistics-related services including the APEC Non-Binding Guidelines on Logistics-related Services that Support the Movement of Essential Goods During a Public Health Emergency;  reports, studies, background papers and presentations from workshops, meetings and Public-Private Dialogues along with recordings of the sessions where available; and links to resources available in other relevant APEC work as well in the output and databases of international organisations working in the area of logistics services policy and performance.

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