Vietnam to host APEC 2017 summit amid challenges: Cambodian expert

Hanoi (VNA) – Cambodia’s daily Khmer Times, one of the two largest English newspapers in Cambodia, on November 6 ran a story entitled “Vietnam to host APEC summit amid challenges” by Chheang Vannarith, a Southeast Asia analyst based in Singapore and Cambodia.

He noted that the world economic order is under stress due to widening inequality, climate change, disruptive technology, rising protectionism, transactional politics and populist politics. However, regional economic integration is thriving amid slow global growth.

More attention and investment is needed to accelerate governance reform for an inclusive, resilient and sustainable society. Innovation in the public sector is critical to improving state performance and adaptation to emerging challenges, the author wrote.

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is so far the largest economic cooperation mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region, which shares 59 percent of world GDP, 48 percent of global trade and 53 percent of global foreign direct investment (FDI).

Vietnam, who became the member of APEC in 1998, will be hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting this week in Da Nang, a coastal city in the central part of Vietnam.

Notably, Vietnam has signed free trade agreements with 18 members of APEC, in which the US, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are the main export markets, the author pointed.

“After more than 30 years of reform and extensive regional and international integration, Vietnam today is a highly open and dynamic economy, projected to become one of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world,” he quoted Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.

The main challenges of the upcoming APEC summit are how to foster open and inclusive global and regional economic governance, how to ensure open and fair regional trade arrangements, how to overcome the challenges stemming from climate change and the fourth industrial revolution and how to link trade with the realisation of the UN sustainable development goals.

Under the theme “creating new dynamism, fostering a shared future”, there are four priority areas – promoting sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth, deepening regional economic integration, strengthening competitiveness and the innovation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and enhancing food security and sustainable agriculture in response to climate change.

Looking ahead, the global economic centre of gravity remains in the Asia-Pacific, concluded the author.-VNA