KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 -- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries should recalibrate its priorities for the development of a new vision for APEC, especially as the Bogor Goals enters its final assessment phase in 2020.

This is important especially when 2020 marks the deadline for achieving the Bogor Goals, aimed at helping 21 member economies to create greater prosperity through economic integration by attaining balance, promoting inclusive, achieving sustainable, enhancing innovative and creating secure growth. 

In 2020 Economic Outlook Report released by Ministry of Finance today, the government opined that the new vision should uphold APEC’s leading role in promoting integration, connectivity as well as inclusive and sustainable quality growth in the era of technology and digitisation aimed at reducing development gaps among member economies.

“APEC member countries can capitalise on the APEC platform to strengthen their economic position through collaborative efforts to generate more tangible benefits,” the report said.

APEC is one of the most important regional economic cooperation in the world and in 2017, APEC accounted for 38 per cent of the world’s total population, of which China contributed 18 per cent, followed by the US and Indonesia, both at four per cent respectively.

Next year will be an important year for Malaysians as the country will play host for the APEC 2020 Summit after first hosting the summit in 1998.

Ministerial and senior officials’ levels would meet up throughout the year to share experiences and best practices on the related field in sectors such as trade, agriculture, transportation, health, communications and finance.

Besides Post-2020 vision for APEC and in line with the APEC Finance Ministers’ Process (APEC FMP) role as a platform to discuss and exchange views on regional macroeconomic and financial developments as well as national and regional policies priorities, the Philippines has introduced Cebu Action Plan (CAP) in 2015, a 10-year roadmap to ensure a more financially integrated, transparent, resilient and connected APEC.

Four pillars under CAP are promoting financial integration, advancing fiscal transparency and policy reform, enhancing financial resilience and accelerating infrastructure development and financing.

The APEC themes and FMP priority areas are under the purview of the host economy taking into the consideration various factors including issues of interest for the host economy, current discussion at the global and APEC front and previous hosts’ priority areas.

-- BERNAMA