Senior business executives in the Asia-Pacific region are not bothered by more stringent US border security and visa rules but they need to be fine-tuned, a regional business survey showed Thursday.
Members of the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) urged US authorities to take steps to minimise the impact of border security measures believed to have caused billions of dollars in losses as a result of visa delays or rejections.
The PBEC said in a statement that a survey of its members this month showed only 4.8 percent of respondents found that the tighter rules caused a "major disruption" of their ability to do business in the US.
Asked if they would limit future business in the US because of the new procedures, 85.7 percent said no.
Many PBEC members believe tighter security measures are a fact of life after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, the statement said.
"We should avoid a repetition of 9/11 at all cost and be ready to share in the effort," Ricardo P. Guevara, chairman of MCCI Corp in the Philippines, was quoted as saying.
PBEC Chairman David Eldon, chairman of HSBC Asia Pacific, said the current US border security measures "have had no impact on HSBC's plans for the development of our businesses in the United States."
But Park Young-Ju, chairman of PBEC Korea, warned that tighter US security rules "will have a bigger impact over the next two or three years and will negatively affect future business."
Qu Pengcheng of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) reported that some Chinese business executives and government officials have cancelled planned activities in the US because they did not want to be fingerprinted during the visa application process.
Business trips, he added, have been rescheduled, while business travellers heading from China to South America are going through Europe to avoid transit stops in US cities. "The visa application process is complicated and time consuming," Qu noted.
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