The discussion at the Twenty-third Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) Conference echoed the wider themes of the conference: alternative systems of industrial organisation; the nature of competition law and competition policy; the relationships between competition policy and trade policy in the Asia Pacific economies; and liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. The relevance of these for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, for which competition policy is one of 15 specific areas for APEC action plans, underlay much of the discussion.