The agenda included the plenary session of the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI), Budget and Management Committee (BMC) and other meetings of Economic Committee (EC), Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS), Oceans and Fisheries Working Group (OFWG), Competition Policy and Law Group (CPLG), Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) and Trade Facilitation (TF).
At meetings of CTI and BMG, representatives from APEC economies exchanged working plans for 2017 with a focus on key missions of CTI in coordinating the agenda on liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment as well as of BMC in budget management-related activities within the APEC forum.
In his opening remarks at the APEC First Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM-1) and related meetings, Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, who chairs SOM APEC 2017, emphasized that APEC is in the important stage in pushing up efforts to fulfill the Bogor Goals by 2020 and the contribution from committees to the success of APEC 2017 is a key move in this stage.
Son also suggested committees focus on the forum’s priority orientations.
Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat, Allan Bollard, updated the plans of the secretariat, which will focus on media campaigns to provide business communities and the people with more detailed information of the APEC forum.
Also on February 26, the Working Group on Trade Facilitation discussed the second phase of the Supply-Chain Connectivity Framework Action Plan in 2017-2020, towards improving the reliability of supply chains to improve business efficiency in Asia-Pacific.
The Economic Committee held a dialogue on government procurement, debating the role of the APEC forum in managing government procurement. On the basis of contributions by international organizations as the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), representatives from APEC member economies shared experience in the fight against corruption, technological application, e-government procurement promotion.
After workshops and activities of sub-groups, the CPLG convened a plenary session. Beside updating the implementation of projects and proposing new initiatives, participants voiced changes in competition policy-related legal regulations, towards the general goal of minimizing interventions distorting the market and improving economic efficiency.
On their second working day, PPFS Committee’s members discussed sustainable agriculture and aquatic resources development, infrastructure investment, and trade and market promotion.
Meanwhile, at the meeting of the OFWG, representatives from APEC economies updated each other of the operation of centers under the forum related to ocean fishing, and discussed maritime environmental protection and adapting to disasters and climate change.
Source: PANO/VNA
Translated by Thu Hang