The 28th PECC General Meeting

The 28th PECC GENERAL MEETING
(2-days Virtual Conference)

IMPLEMENTING THE PUTRAJAYA VISION

“REVITALIZING THE REGIONAL ECONOMY AND
ENSURING SUSTAINABLE & INCLUSIVE SOCIETIES”

21-22 JULY 2021

We are pleased to announce that the 28th PECC General Meeting will be hosted virtually by the New Zealand Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council on the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Teams Meeting platform. The General Meeting will be held on the 21st – 22nd July 2021.

The 2-days conference will provide insights, recommendations, and exchanges of views from distinguished speakers in addressing issues pertaining to managing COVID and reviving regional growth, rebuilding support for open trade, emerging issues of the digital economy, and climate change; with intent to support the achievement of Putrajaya Vision, as well as to attain sustainable and inclusive regional economic growth.

Spaces for this conference are limited. Please approach y...

PECC Statement for 3rd APEC Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting

On behalf of PECC Co-Chairs, Mr. Eduardo Pedrosa, Secretary-General of PECC attended the 3rd APEC Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting virtually on 16 June 2021. This meeting is pivotal not only because it will set forward APEC’s further work on structural reform for the next 5 years, but also its relative importance to the overall APEC agenda.

PECC’s statement to the ministers identified 5 key action areas that needed to be addressed in APEC’s next phase of work on structural reforms::

1. Promotes structural reform to achieve well-functioning, transparent and competitive markets;
2. Recognises the importance of structural reform for progressing liberalisation, facilitation and expansion of services and agricultural trade, and in facilitating the freer, more efficient flow of foreign investment;
3. Embraces a strong commitment to deeper regulatory cooperation and development of compatible standards to improve connectivity and efficient investment in infrastructure;
4. Underlines how struct...

APEC Trade Ministers Act to Boost Vaccine Production

PECC co-chairs Dr Richard Cantor and Ambassador Zhan Yongxin represented the Council at the APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting. During the meeting Dr Cantor spoke on behalf of the co-chairs noting that “Last month we met with our PECC executive committee to discuss developments in the region, and there was an unambiguous message from our members that the economic recovery remains fragile with several economies in our region suffering from 2nd or 3rd waves of infections.”

Dr Cantor continued to say that “the region’s most urgent priority is to cooperate on vaccinating as many people as we can, as quickly and as equitably as we can because this will ultimately facilitate the movement of people and the opening of our economies.”

PECC has five recommendations to address the COVID-19 pandemic:

1. We call on APEC to adopt practical measures to ensure the accessibility and affordability of COVID-19 vaccines in all economies.
2. While manufacturing capacity for COVID-19 vaccines ha...

MXCPEC Webinar: Gender Inclusion and Women's Empowerment in APEC

In the XXIst Century, women participation in the economy has been recognized as an indispensable condition to potentiate the development of economies. In the APEC region, notwithstanding that there had been advancements in the empowerement of women, still there are significant gender gaps in public policies and structural barriers that limit women’s development that the COVID-19 pandemic has made even worse.

The Mexico Member Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (MXCPEC) has as one of its main objectives to contribute with other Fora to deepen the study of the complex themes regarding women inclusion and empowerment and to socialize this knowledge through online seminars with specialists in such topics to further the understanding on women’s role nowadays and to inform public policies for them to enhance the potential of women.

The current Webinar objective is to address those issues by gathering five outstanding academics from Australia, Japan, Phillipines, Mexico...

27th PECC GENERAL MEETING CONCLUDES

The 27th PECC General Meeting concluded on 17 December 2020. The event was hosted by the Malaysian National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (MANCPEC) on the theme of “Optimizing Human Potential Towards Future of Shared Prosperity and Sustainability in Times of Covid-19.” Ambassador Don Campbell, international co-chair of PECC said that how we respond to the Covid-19 crisis was a defining moment of our age. While we were in a moment of danger, we were also in a moment of opportunity to address issues that we had thus far failed to address – such as sustainability and inequality.

Mr. Herizal Hazri, Chief Executive, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), and Chair, Malaysia National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation reflecting on the discussions over the course of the General Meeting said that it is clear that there we have many challenges facing us due to Covid-19, but it is also clear that many of these questions have been with us for decades – how...