Advisory council chairman says group best served by avoiding turmoil and not dispensing quick-fix remedy

The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum has been unfairly criticised for failing to put forward constructive solutions during the regional financial crisis, says the head of its business sub-grouping.

Timothy Ong Teck Mong, the Apec Business Advisory Council's chairman and the new publisher of Asia Inc magazine, said the best Apec could aim for was to avoid crises, not manage them.

'There is a tension between what people expect Apec to do and what Apec is,' Mr Ong said. 'Apec covers perhaps the most diverse region of the world, and it operates on the basis of consensus. You cannot have decisive action with an organisation based on consensus.'

Apec's 21 economies run the gamut from Mr Ong's tiny home country of Brunei, which is chairing the organisation's meeting this year, to the largest economy in the world, the United States. So reaching consensus can be difficult. Reliance on consensus-building is being called into question in other regional groups. At the just-concluded Association of Southeast Asian Nations ministerial meeting in Bangkok, for example, the host country spearheaded attempts to streamline decision-making to respond more quickly to crises.

These efforts ran into opposition from more conservative members of the 10-nation group, and Apec members, with greater diversity, would probably find the prospect even more daunting.

'Once you deviate from the consensus rule, the institution will fall apart,' Mr Ong said. 'There is too much diversity for it [Apec] not to operate on the basis of consensus.'

The organisation worked despite the challenges of consensus, he said, because the member economy serving as chair in any particular year felt its national prestige at stake and so worked hard to herd Apec's members in a single, coherent direction.