KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have been urged\u00a0to be receptive to the proposed\u00a0Declaration on Facilitating the Movement of Essential Goods to boost regional trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The declaration proposes for all APEC economies to offer a self-determined list of goods for unilateral tariff concessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
APEC Senior Officials\u2019 Meeting chair\u00a0Hairil Yahri Yaacob\u00a0said he sees the declaration as a potential accomplishment\u00a0for the forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSpecifically, I must stress that the declaration could be a significant deliverable for APEC to demonstrate our commitment to promoting regional trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI call upon colleagues to exercise as much flexibility as possible in accommodating this declaration in order to accomplish a concrete deliverable for the Virtual Ministers Responsible for Trade (VMRT) Meeting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said this in his welcoming remarks at the Second Virtual Extraordinary Senior Officials\u2019 Meeting (VESOM2) Friday, which was attended by all APEC economies, the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) as well as selected observers from international and regional organisations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hairil said VESOM2 will take stock of its progress and determine concrete action and next steps in achieving its assigned goals, which will be presented to the Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) when they meet tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is important that we can present a united front on these initiatives and provide assurance to our ministers that we are able to deliver according to their instructions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had also stressed that APEC must strengthen its ties in order to better adapt to the trials and tribulations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequently coming out of it stronger than ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He noted that in May, the senior officials were instructed to take all necessary steps to ensure that the flow of essential goods and services across the region remained undisrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were also instructed to develop a coordinated approach to collect and share information on policies and measures regarding COVID-19 and its economic effect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Ministry\u00a0of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the VMRT meeting was scheduled to be held in April in Kuala Lumpur but was postponed to July 25 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali who is also MITI minister will chair the first digital APEC 2020 trade ministers meeting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have been urged\u00a0to be receptive to the proposed\u00a0Declaration on Facilitating the Movement of Essential Goods to boost regional trade.\u00a0 The declaration proposes for all APEC economies to offer a self-determined list of goods for unilateral tariff concessions. APEC Senior Officials\u2019 Meeting chair\u00a0Hairil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":62991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288,300,318],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84867"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}