Apec card opens doors to shorter immigration queues - but not all

If you want to flash a bolt of electricity through any conversation among business executives in Asia, there can be few safer ways than mentioning the Apec Business Travel Card (ABTC). It seems to provoke passions wherever it goes.

Out pour anecdotes of hassles in immigration queues, complaints about the many months it takes for the card to be approved and frustration at those economies that refuse to accredit you.

You also get envious Americans and Canadians who whinge over just how long it will take for their governments to sign up: even Russia joined the scheme last May, leaving just the United States and Canada as outliers that have yet to provide the card to their business communities.

There is something quaint about watching business executives comparing cards, comparing which economies have given them access and which have not - a bit like American schoolchildren enviously comparing baseball cards.

The ABTC is perhaps the one reliable thing that any businessperson knows about the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum - and one of a tiny number of achievements over Apec's 25-year life that really do seem to have made a difference.