(CEBU CITY, Cebu) Senior officials of member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set forth this week the Renewed APEC Agenda for Structural Reform (RAASR) 2016-2020 to meet the needs and priorities of the economic bloc in the next five years and beyond.
“We invite leaders of APEC economies leaders to jointly pledge to undertake robust, comprehensive and ambitious structural reforms to reduce inequality and stimulate growth in their economies,” APEC senior officials said in a statement issued on Tuesday after their two-day meeting on structural reform held here.
They said they hope that each leader’s commitment could contribute to the APEC’s overarching goal to promote balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative, and secured growth.
This will be done through the following guidelines: having more open, transparent and competitive markets; deeper participation of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), women, youth and people with disabilities as well as older workers; and putting up sustainable solid policies that enhance economic resiliency and growth.
Under the RAASR, each economy will develop an individual action plan, setting forth its structural reform priorities, objectives and policies starting 2016 until 2020.
“The inclusion of quantitative and qualitative indicators to demonstrate how progress will be monitored is strongly encouraged,” the senior officials said in the statement.
Economies are also encouraged to nominate reform action under all guidelines and across all sectors, particularly services, to ensure individual action plans are suitably ambitious and comprehensive.
The APEC officials said they are carrying out the RAASR as a result of the Asia-Pacific region’s slower global economic growth, slower potential growth, fiscal consolidation, and relatively weak private sector investment.
“In such environment, structural reforms are critical to boost growth through increasing productivity and addressing APEC’s long-term development objectives of graduating to high income status and continuing improvement in living standards despite the ageing populations in some economies,” they said in the statement. (PND)