The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) opens its plenary session in
The session includes four topics: “Advancing the Busan Roadmap to Achieve the Bogor Goals”, “Building Prosperity Together through Economic and Technical Cooperation and Shared Development”, “Fostering a Secure and Favourable Environment for Trade and Investment”, “Promoting APEC Linkages and “Fostering Closer APEC-ABAC Relations.”
Since early this year, ABAC has organised three sessions in
The report covers nine major recommendations with a focus on resuming the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations, taking measures to cope with imbalances in energy and oil prices, promoting bilateral and sub regional trade agreements and trade facilitation, removing difficulties to develop the private economic sector, reinforcing the risk control systems, enhancing the regional financial system, encouraging investment inflows and promoting technology innovations.
Regarding Vietnam’s ABAC initiatives, president of ABAC 2006 Hoang Van Dung said, “ We has proposed building an Asia-Pacific free trade area relating to all enterprises, especially Vietnamese enterprises’ market opening. A proposal for supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been made as it is related to capital and evaluation of enterprises’ confidence.
Some 40,000 enterprises are established in
Most enterprises in APEC are SMEs and the number of SMEs in some APEC member economies even make up 95 percent of their total enterprises.
Annually, SMEs in APEC contribute an average of around US$1,000 billion to the regional economy, accounting for 30 percent of the bloc’s trade values. However, they are facing a lot of difficulties in doing business and production activities, particularly in gaining access to credit capital inflows and international trade-related knowledge.
According to economic researchers, an SME needs around US$300,000 to start up its business. Of the sum, one third is mobilised through banks and credit organisations.
Virginia Little-John, executive director of US Quantrum Leaps company, said investment capital will remain an important factor for enterprises and this issue will need a great deal of effort. She said APEC SME management agencies should be fully aware of difficulties in mobilising capital for SMEs. This is posing a challenge for
In the context of deep integration, APEC businesses are having to cope with a number of challenges, including changes in the international financial and monetary market, fluctuation in the prices of materials and fuel, rapid development of science and technology, which will require proper investments to renew technology, improve human resources and sharpen competitiveness. One of the effective solutions is to further increase cooperation among APEC businesses for sustainable development.
Do Van Hau, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation, said the meeting is a great opportunity for Vietnamese SMEs to strengthen international cooperation and integration. For APEC SMEs entering
To achieve the Bogor Goals of trade and investment liberalisation, the APEC business community has asked APEC member economies to strongly implement a number of domestic solutions, including improving the legal frameworks and institutions, practising the law-governed mechanism, reducing administrative procedures, investing in infrastructure and improving working conditions. It has called for improvement of information supply and access to information channels and financial resources to help business, particularly SMEs, build new capabilities and gain better access to technology in trade and investment in each APEC member economy and in the world.
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