While the Republic of Korea is busy hosting APEC 2005 with the central theme "Towards One Community: Meet the Challenge, Make the Change", Vietnam is making necessary preparations for APEC 2006. Vietnam has yet to select a central theme and sub-themes to properly represent the interests of stakeholders of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum) and the host economy, but it has done a lot of worksto ensure the success of the event to be held late next year in Hanoi.
The Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 4 held a seminar on building the themes and defining priorities of APEC 2006, at which many delegates agreed that the central theme should be the continuation of the forum’s major trend: towards one community. Ambassador Tran Trong Toan, Deputy Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat proposed that the theme should be building a sustainable community: strengthening cooperation for joint development, and that the priority sectors should be constructing a Hanoi action plan to realize the Busan Roadmap, continuing facilitation to ensure the success of Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations, beefing up investment and technology transfer, fostering the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises, and beefing up cooperation between the public sector and private one for human security.
At the International Symposium on the Preparation for APEC Vietnam 2006 held from July 21-22, Ambassador Choi Seok Young, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat, mentioned three basic points that are important to keep in mind when developing APEC themes.
First, clarity with vision: the themes should clearly refer to the imperatives of the coming year in the form of a message that outlines the achievable actions and new areas of focus for APEC. The themes should be written in clear, concise and jargon-free language which is easily understood across cultures. Second, relevance and continuity: the themes should stay relevant to the APEC's central goals such as two pillars of the forum’s activities, and represent the continuity of its work since APEC began. In particular, the themes need to be aligned and demonstrate continuity with the work of the most recent hosts of the APEC process. Third, the host’s flavor: the themes should express a flavor of the host economy.
“In April, Vietnam unveiled the logo for the 2006 APEC Year. This design alluded to Vietnam's aspirations for the global community that is in a process of continuous development. I presume that Vietnam has already given careful thought to community-building and sustained growth as main message to be delivered next year,” he stated.
Drawing on the image of a traditional Vietnamese conical hat, also letter A for APEC, the logo incorporates an oval which is representative of the global community in continuous development. The logo uses three colours, yellow, red and blue, to represent Asia, the Americas and the Pacific, respectively. With the logo having been officially adopted, it will always appear alongside the central blue and green APEC logo.
At the symposium, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan said: “Vietnam will keep on striving to solve the challenges facing APEC and making better changes for our community. We will also commit to what have been pursued by APEC's previous host economies, specifically the 3 major frames. First, towards the completion of Bogor Goals of which trade and investment liberalization, facilitation, ECOTECH (APEC Economic and Technical Cooperation) are three pillars. Second, setting up and securing sustainable and safe business environment covering health security, natural disaster response and prevention, energy security, anti-corruption, information technology, intellectual property rights. Third, the prospect of one economic community in the Asia-Pacific region.”
During the two-day symposium, the delegates from 21 APEC member economies, and the forum’s Secretariat and relevant organisations focused their discussions on four major topics, namely 15 years in retrospect, New global and regional context - implications to APEC, The way forward, and Preparation for APEC Vietnam 2006. Many Vietnamese delegates said the APEC Year 2006 should center on such priority areas as embarking upon the implementation of the Busan roadmap to Bogor goals, promoting investment and technology transfer - to go on par with trade facilitation, enhancing public-private partnership for human security, and ensuring the shared development through economic and technical cooperation.
Vietnam has put forth a theme and sub-themes for 2006 APEC SME (Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meeting). The theme is “Overall competitiveness improvement for SME, and the sub-hemes “Enabling business environment for all enterprises”, “Human resource development for SME,” “Better access to basic resources for SME.”
On August 10, the APEC 2006 National Committee headed by Vu Khoan held the first meeting to instructed preprations for 35-40 APEC meetings and related activities, including four senior officials meeting (SOM), four ministerial meetings (Trade, Finance, SME and Tourism), and the summit meeting slated for Hanoi from November 12-19, 2006. At the committee’s meeting, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said it would submit the government a scheme on developing the country’s tourism before and after APEC 2006. Many well-known hotels, even luxury apartment blocks, and restaurants in Hanoi would be mobilized for the events. The city now houses 371 hotels with a total of 11,436 rooms, including eight 5-star hotels, six 4-star and twenty-two 3-star. The hotels are estimated to serve over half of delegates to the events.
As early as March 2004, Vietnam set up the APEC 2006 Inter-Ministerial Task Force which acted as preparatory and planning body. The government established the APEC 2006 National Committee on August 5, whose membership includes chairman Vu Khoan, two vice chairmen (Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Dy Nien and Minister of Trade Truong Dinh Tuyen), and 28 members. The committee has five sub-committees, namely content, material-logistics, security, propaganda-culture, and protocol.
APEC, the premier forum established in 1989 for facilitating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region, is the only inter governmental grouping in the world operating on the basis of non-binding commitments, open dialogue and equal respect for the views of all participants. APEC has 21 members, including China, the United States, Australia, Russia, Japan and Vietnam, which account for more than a third of the world's population, nearly 60 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), and about 47 per cent of the world trade. It has worked to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers across the Asia-Pacific region, creating efficient domestic economies and dramatically increasing exports.
In 1994, when the APEC summit was held in Bogor, Indonesia, it adopted the Bogor Goals which specified that free and open trade and investment would be achieved among developed economies by 2010 and among developing economies by 2020.
Dong Phong
Vietnamese
