APEC Economic Leaders’ Week results shown to int’l organisations in Hanoi

Permanent Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, APEC 2017 SOM Chair, led a meeting in Hanoi on November 17 to announce the outcomes of APEC Economic Leaders’ Week 2017 to foreign representative offices and international organisations in the capital city.

Permanent Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son
Permanent Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son

The event was attended by representatives from the APEC 2017 National Committee, the Subcommittees of the National Committee, and the APEC 2017 National Secretariat, along with representatives from nearly 70 foreign representative offices and international organisations.

Addressing the meeting, Son highlighted the significant results of the recent APEC Economic Leaders’ Week 2017, stating that the event in Da Nang city was among the few APEC high-level weeks that attracted a large crowd of participants, with more than 11,000 attendees, including 4,500 officials, over 4,000 businesses, and nearly 3,000 correspondents from APEC member countries. Every leader of the 21 APEC economies was in attendance.

It was the first time that Vietnam had hosted a high-level activity on a regional scale in a city outside the capital, he added.

The deputy PM affirmed that on the theme of “Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future,” the eight joint documents adopted during the Week, especially the Da Nang Declaration and the APEC Ministerial Meeting Joint Ministerial Statement, have reflected APEC members’ strong commitments towards the forum’s core goals and values of facilitating trade and investment liberalisation, and supporting the multilateral trading system.

The agreed documents not only help to build on APEC’s existing achievements concerning human resource development, growth, structural reforms, and the facilitation of small and medium-sized enterprises to join the global market, continuing to bring benefits for the APEC people and businesses, but also create new and important foundations for APEC’s cooperation process in the time ahead, Son said.

He expressed his sincere thanks for the support and close coordination from APEC member economies, as well as for the practical assistance offered by representative offices of APEC member economies and international organisations in Hanoi during Vietnam’s preparations for the APEC high-level week, contributing to the attainment of the aforementioned outcomes.

Representatives from foreign diplomatic missions and international organisations spoke highly of the significant outcomes of the APEC high-level week and the APEC Year 2017, as well as the regulating and leading role played by Vietnam in achieving the above-mentioned results, in the context that 2017 is the most challenging year for APEC cooperation and multilateralism as a whole.

They also pledged to continue to collaborate with Vietnam and other APEC member economies in the implementation of the outcomes of the Vietnam APEC Year 2017.