SOM 2 and related meetings commence in Hanoi

During the course of the first working day, the APEC Mining Task Force (MTF) will hold its 11th meeting and a Workshop on Mine Closure Checklist for Governments.

There will be meetings of the Subcommittee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC), the Food Safety Cooperation Forum (FSCF), the Partnership Training Institute Network (PTIN), the Group of Friends on Disability (GoFD) and the APEC Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE) and an Export Certificate Workshop.

SOM 2 will comprise 49 meetings, workshops and dialogues of committees and working groups of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, covering a range of spheres such as trade and investment liberalisation, business facilitation, human resource development, education, network economy, food safety, science, technology and creativity, mining, automobile industry and urbanisation.

At these events, APEC delegates are expected to continue speeding up the implementation of long-term cooperation programmes and plans in key areas and reach consensus on documents to be submitted to ministers for approval, laying a foundation for preparing contents and documents for the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting and APEC Ministerial Meeting in central Da Nang city in November 2017.

A Multi-stakeholder Dialogue on APEC towards 2020 and Beyond, a High-level Policy Dialogue on Human Resource Development in the Digital Age, a Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) meeting, a Senior Finance Officials Meeting (SFOM) and the 23rd Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) Meeting will also be held on this occasion.

Since its inception in 1989, APEC has proved itself as a leading economic cooperation and connectivity mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on three pillars: trade and investment liberalisation, business facilitation and economic-technological cooperation.

APEC now groups 21 member economies, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, the US and Vietnam, which together account for 39 percent of the world’s population and contribute 59 percent of the global GDP and 48 percent of the global trade by November 2016.-