Meeting to take on issues impeding countries’ growth

CEBU, Philippines - Several issues that impede inclusive growth in the member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation will be highlighted in the Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting set on September 7 and 8, 2015 in Cebu City.

The Provincial Information Office said the ministers would discuss key issues which include challenges in implementing structural reform, the 21 member economies’ respective priorities, and areas of collaboration.

A review on the APEC’s structural reform efforts and setting of post-2015 agenda would also be done.

“Guided by this year’s theme, our priority is to facilitate inclusiveness, not only in the regional sense but also within economies. The APEC region has been growing rapidly as a whole but this is in many cases shared unevenly across societies,” said Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

Balisacan chairs the Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting.

Speakers from the APEC Secretariat and the World Bank will also speak on regulatory reform and cooperation on services. This will be followed by a panel discussion among ministers and heads of delegations on the challenges in undertaking structural reform.

Discussions of the SRMM will revolve around five themes: Structural Reform for Inclusive Growth; Structural Reform and Innovation; Structural Reform and Services; Tools for Structural Reform; and New Directions for Structural Reform in APEC.

At the end of the meeting, the ministers will adopt a post-2015 APEC New Strategy for Structural Reform, an approach that is seen to further enhance the efforts and focus of structural reform initiatives from 2016 to 2020.

NEDA Deputy Director-General Emmanuel Esguerra will head the Philippine delegation to this year’s Structural Reform Ministerial Meeting, the second since 2008. The first meeting was held in 2008 in Australia.— Michael Vencynth H. Braga/NSA (FREEMAN)