Some 2,000 delegates expected to attend SOM 2, related meetings

Delegates attend the first APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 1) in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province, in February - Source: VNA

To date, around 250 local reporters and 200 foreign peers have also signed up for coverage of these events, the organisers said.

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 deployment 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 multilateral dialogue on APEC towards 2020 and the future, 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).

Vietnam officially joined APEC in November 1998, marking a milestone in the implementation of its foreign policy of openness, multilateralisation and diversification of relations and international economic integration.

Since then, Vietnam has made positive contributions to the APEC cooperation process. The country successfully hosted the APEC Year 2006, in which the 14th APEC Economic Leaders Meeting endorsed the Hanoi Action Plan to implement the Busan Roadmap towards the Bogor Goals, approved measures to enhance the efficiency of APEC cooperation and set out long-term prospects towards the formation of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). In 2014, Vietnam also successfully organised the 6th APEC Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting.

Vietnam has recommended and joined in many new initiatives alongside with proposing and carrying out more than 100 projects related to trade, investment, economic-technological cooperation, small- and medium-sized enterprises, response to emergency, healthcare, food security and counter-terrorism. The nation has assumed important positions in APEC cooperation mechanisms.