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Officials Lay Groundwork for APEC 2015 |
| Source: |
www.sunstar.com.ph |
| Source Date: |
Sunday, February 15, 2015 |
| Focus: |
Electronic and Mobile Government, Citizen Engagement, Internet Governance
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| Created: |
Feb 17, 2015 |
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The two-day First Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Senior Officials Meeting (SOM), held last week here, gathered 21 member economies to lay groundwork for inclusive growth across the Asia Pacific. The first SOM kicked off the country's host year as Apec Chair this year and it is in this two-day meeting where senior officials built on technical decisions made by the Apec technical working groups to advance its different priorities, namely: enhancing the regional economic integration agenda, fostering small and medium enterprises (SMEs), participation in regional and global markets, investing in human capital, and building resilient and sustainable communities. Ambassador Laura Del Rosario, Philippine Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs and 2015 Chair of the Apec Senior Officials' Meeting, said Apec senior officials gave "tremendous support" for the said priorities. Part of achieving growth-which Del Rosario said must be green and sustainable, balanced, innovative, inclusive, and secured-are Apec member communities looking at reducing poverty rates, even in developed countries. Some of these developed countries are worried about inequity because, according to her "there are people whose salaries are not rising fast enough to meet the rising cost (of living)." She elaborated on the priority of investing in human capital, saying that the area of services-not just services such as tourism, medical, logistics, infrastructure, delivery but also services like research and design-is also being looked at and how they can be spread among the member communities. "Human capital development does not happen through machines and products alone, they happen through people," said Del Rosario. "And services mean people and connectivity also means people and services." The Ambassador also stressed on the priority of building resilient and sustainable communities, citing natural calamities that devastated some APEC member economies- from Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) here in the Philippines to the earthquake and tsunami experienced in Japan in 2011-which she said disrupted not only businesses but lives as well. "We're talking about sustainability and resilience of communities and community of business," del Rosario said. Del Rosario added that part of building resilient and sustainable communities is securing an economy's ICT (information and communications technology). "It isn't when the cell sites are broken (when) we realize how important infrastructure of telecoms is because we could not communicate to those who needed help," she said. Another part of building resilient and sustainable communities is strengthening and securing energy source infrastructures. Del Rosario said sources of energy should be secured "if anything happens, whether it's an act of nature or an act of terrorism." The issue of urbanization was also taken into account under sustainable and resilient communities. She said there is a need for resilient infrastructure, transportation system, and grid systems. "Apec is really about man and the environment where he lives and the environment where he earns a living," Del Rosario said.
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Officials Lay Groundwork for APEC 2015 The two-day First Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Apec Senior Officials Meeting SOM held last week here gathered 21 member economies to lay groundwork for inclusive growth across the Asia Pacific
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