Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members recently met at Peru to discuss the future of international trade policies, sustainable economic growth and shared prosperity in the APAC region under the theme of ‘quality growth and human development’
The meeting addressed many concerns and prioritised regional economic integration and quality growth, enhancing the regional food market, modernisation of MSMEs and developing human capital in the APAC region.
The leaders’ declaration, released after the meeting, reaffirmed their aspirations towards achieving sustainable, innovative and secure growth in the APEC region as reflected in the APEC Accord on innovative development, economic reform and growth and the APEC strategy for strengthening quality growth by 2020. There was added stress on ensuring the policies devised by the group would enable them to focus their efforts on ensuring contribution towards raising people’s quality of life and enhancing social equity in the region.
A challenge notably recognised was the one to food security; to contribute to the cause while preserving natural resources. This, APEC stated, can be done by taking steps to further promote sustainable agriculture, food, forest management, fisheries and aquaculture, enhance food markets, integrate food producers into domestic and global food supply and value chains, reduce food loss and waste.
APEC also noted identifying checkpoints arising from infrastructure gaps and burdensome and unnecessarily restrictive trade measures as challenges that need to be overcome in order to successfully execute efforts towards promoting the greater agenda at hand.
The leaders also encouraged economies to share best practices in water management to ensure water availability and increase water use efficiency, considering multi-sector and multi-level perspectives.
