The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is an inter-governmental grouping operating on the basis of non-binding commitments, established in 1989 to further enhance economic growth and prosperity for the region, and to strengthen the Asia-Pacific community.
There are 21 member economies of the APEC: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, The Russian Federation, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, USA, and Vietnam.
The agenda includes achieving APEC’s vision referred to as the ‘Bogor Goals’ of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific by 2010 for industrialized economies, and 2020 for developing economies, as agreed in a 1994 meeting in Bogor, Indonesia.
President Duterte was in Lima, Peru from Nov. 19 to 20 to attend the APEC Summit which aimed to foster free trade and spur investments and economic growth.
Philippine trade with APEC member-economies worth $103.18 billion accounts for roughly 80 percent of total Philippine trade.
He had talks with world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Other leaders who attended were Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and newly-elected Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski who hosted the summit.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the APEC leaders.
Duterte was set to bring up peace and order, and to push economic agenda/initiatives of his administration:
1. Continue and maintain current macro-economic policies, including fiscal, monetary, and trade policies.
2. Institute progressive tax reforms and a more effective tax collection, legislation presented to Congress in September 2016.
3. Increase the competitiveness and the ease of doing business in the country, pursue the relaxation of the Constitutional restrictions on foreign ownerships — except land ownership — to attract foreign direct investment.
4. Accelerate annual infrastructure spending to account for five percent of the GDP, with Public-Private Partnerships playing a key role.
5. Promote rural and value-chain development toward increasing agricultural and rural enterprise productivity and rural tourism.
6. Ensure security of land tenure to encourage investments, and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies.
7. Invest in human capital development, including health and education systems, and match skills and training to meet the demand of businesses and the private sector.
8. Promote science, technology, and the creative arts to enhance innovation and creative capacity towards self-sustaining, inclusive development.
9. Improve social protection programs, including the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program
10. Strengthen the implementation of Responsible Parenthood and the Reproductive Health Law to enable couples to make informed choices on financial and family planning.
Filipinos are expecting the promise of economic CHANGES, and of good governance to come true!
Let’s have breakfast at the Mary Immaculate Parish on Sunday, Dec. 4. Please get your tickets for P200 each from church members or the church office.
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Author’s email: whelmayap@yahoo.com
