YOKOHAMA, Japan, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Ministers and leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) meet this week in Japan's port city of Yokohama to discuss stratetgies to sustain a fragile recovery from the global financial crisis.
Here are some key facts about the Pacific rim group.
MEMBERSHIP
-- APEC's 21 member economies account for 40 percent of the world's population (almost 3 billion people), 53 percent of world GDP, and 44 percent of global trade.
-- The group includes the world's three biggest economies -- the United States, China and Japan -- and some of the fastest growing emerging ones, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico. The other members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan (under the name Chinese Taipei), and Vietnam.
MISSION
-- APEC was launched in 1989 in Australia as an informal dialogue among 12 members. Its leaders have met annually since 1993 focusing mainly on promoting free trade. The group operates by consensus with no framework to negotiate binding agreements. But it has a permanent secretariat in Singapore and sponsors more than 100 formal and informal meetings a year.
MATTERS
-- The leaders are expected to adopt a new growth strategy that emphasizes balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure economic growth.
-- One of the most contentious issues in that strategy is how to achieve balanced growth because that could include the touchy issue of global currency realignments to ease trade imbalances. The topic will likely dominate a summit of the G20 rich and emerging economies in Seoul just before APEC.
-- The ministers and leaders will look at various ways of creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which if it is achieved, would become, by far, the world's largest.
-- The leaders are expected to declare that the first stage of the "Bogor goals" -- agreed at the 1994 summit in Bogor, Indonesia -- has been achieved. These call for industrialised nations to realize free and open trade and investment by 2010, and by 2020 for developing economies.
MODE
-- APEC tradition calls for all participants to don native attire for a photo shoot on the meeting's last day, which is often the most memorable event from these annual confabulations. Previous meetings have seen the leaders don Chilean ponchos, U.S. bombardier jackets, Chinese silk jackets, batik shirts, Korean Hanboks, Vietnamese silk tunics, New Zealand sailing jackets, and Australian Drizabone raincoats.
Japanese organisers have been tight-lipped about this year's APEC fashion show, though speculation is that it will have a kimono theme. The one previous time Japan hosted an APEC summit was Osaka in 1995, when the leaders simply wore business suits for the summit-ending class photo. (Writing by Bill Tarrant)