Foreign media spotlights Vietnam’s hosting of APEC week

“Today Vietnam is being counted as an economy of the future courtesy reforms undertaken by its ruling Communist Party over the past few decades. Starting from a small, and backward economy heavily devastated after more than 30 years of war, lagging far behind the region and the world and with extremely difficult living conditions, rapid development to improve people's lives, and strengthen the country was an urgent requirement for Vietnam”, the article said.

India’s The Economic Times highlights APEC Summit and Vietnam's economic achievements and challenges ahead.

As the host of this year’s APEC meetings, Vietnam stressed the need for the member economies to look for new driving forces for sustainable development, deepen regional cooperation and more importantly, achieve the Bogor Goals in free trade and investment by 2020, it said.

In an article entitled “Vietnam to host APEC summit amid challenges” on November 6, The Khmer Times of Cambodia said APEC is so far the largest economic cooperation mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region, which shares 59% of the world’s GDP, 48% of global trade and 53% of the global FDI. 

Under the theme “Creating new dynamism, fostering a shared future”, the APEC Year 2017 outlined four priority areas – promoting sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth; deepening regional economic integration; strengthening competitiveness and the innovation of Micro-, Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs); and enhancing food security and sustainable agriculture in response to climate change.

“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,” the article cited.

The press in New Zealand quoted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as saying that APEC is important to the country’s future economic development and the APEC 2017 Economic Leaders’ Meeting provides an opportunity to strengthen its commitment to the region and lay a foundation for its regional free trade agreements.

The New Zealand PM said addressing a number of contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be her priority at this week’s APEC meeting in Vietnam, adding that her government is striving to remove the pact’s investor-state dispute settlement clauses, which would allow foreign corporations to sue member states in disputes.