Crean was speaking at the opening of a two-day meeting on Pacific trade in the South Australian capital city of Adelaide.
The meeting has brought together trade officials to discuss a roadmap for negotiations for the proposed PACER-plus agreement.
Crean said the aim of PACER-plus was to build economic sustainability and to place a priority on capacity-building.
“There’s not much point convincing countries that they’ve got to embrace trade liberalization if they haven’t got the capacity to take advantage of it,” he told the ABC.
“And we know that there are many countries within the Pacific that do need to have their infrastructure, their skill base, for example, built if they are to take advantage and be competitive into the longer term.”
Crean said he wants to hear from Pacific officials about issues of local importance across the region. He said discussions so far have been good and frank and that, despite some differences, problems identified so far can be dealt with.
Meanwhile, a new report by the Asian Development Bank has found poor performing state-owned enterprises are holding back economic growth in some Pacific nations and putting upward pressure on tax rates.
The report follows an ADB analysis of some Pacific economies and the results have been tabled at a two-day conference in New Zealand.
The Samoan prime minister, the Tongan finance minister and a delegation from Fiji attending the meeting have been told that their public utilities need private sector discipline and competitive market pressure to survive.
An advisor to the ADB, Laure Darcy, has told Radio Australia that in such difficult global economic times, Pacific nations can learn a lot from the report.
“The purpose of that analysis was to look at how they are performing comparatively and but also so the leaders can learn from each other what measures have worked and what hasn’t worked,” she said.
