Hanoi (VNA) - Dr. Alan Bollard, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat, has highlighted Vietnam's role and contributions as well as its hallmarks in hosting the APEC Year for the second time in an interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency. Following is the full text of the interview.

1. What do you think about Vietnam’s role in and itscontribution to APEC since its admission to the forum in 1998?

Vietnam hasbeen a very active member of APEC for almost 20 years now. Initially when itjoined, it was quite a poor economy but appeared to look at the APEC vision ofopening up trade to get growth in the region and it has done that verysuccesfully.

Justover a decade ago in 2006, it hosted the APEC year and the leaders metin Hanoi at the end of the year and from that year we seecontributions to improving capacity building across a range of APECinitiatives.

🐟 As alower income economy, Vietnam was able to realise that in order to achieve manyof the stated APEC goals requires more capacity building and training to go onnot just in Vietnam but in other economies as well.

2. Whatdo you think about the theme and the priorities for APEC Vietnam 2017?

For2017, Vietnam has a theme on “Creating a dynamism and fostering ashared future”, which is very general and wide enough to include the wholerange of initiatives going on in APEC. The 4 particular priorities focus us onthe important work. Vietnam got agreement to this at the beginning ofthe year and propose them as their own initiatives. During the year other economies have also contributedother initiatives. The themes continue the importantmulti-year work of APEC as well.

There isa theme on promoting sustainable and innovative growth which reflects the factthat we now realise we have to focus much more not just on growth rates buton how to achieve and who benefit from them. That was a clear messagefrom APEC leaders at Lima last year.

There’sanother priority on regional economic integration which continues the way wehave been looking at the regional trade agreements in the region, of coursesome of these have been changing during the year.

Inaddition, looking at the way that a free trade area for Asia Pacific concept can be used to help bring these together and help themconverge and in addition looking at a whole range ofother initiatives such as supply chains which helpconnect up the economies.

Thethird priority has been on modernizing micro, small and medium enterprises. Ina digital context, that’s been very important because we are hoping to seefurther development on agreement around the electronic commerce in APEC, whichwill help facilitate small businesses in the region which of course foster the majority businesses to join in and enjoysome of the benefits of regional trade and investment.

Thefourth priorty has been on food security and particularly in the context ofclimate change, reflecting some concerns that Vietnam and other economieshave..., putting foot security at risk. There was alot of initiatives proposed during the food securityweek heldin Can Tho.

𒁏 3. Whatdo you think about the changing trading envirionment and how would thatimpact APEC’s pursuit of the co-called Bogor goalsand regional economic integration, the pursuit of free and open trade in theregion. What do you see that going during this Vietnam APECyear?

Bogorgoal was a commitment towards free and open trade and developedeconomies by 2010, which was largely achieved but not entirely andstill requires some ongoing work and in developing economies by 2020, so a couple of years away. We have been under Vietnam’s leadership monitoring progress towards those goalsand we continue to see some advancements in many areasparticularly behind the borders around structuralreform and rigorous change.

Butthere is further work that still needs to be done to achievethese. Of course we have also over the last yearseen some other views on trade policy developments,that will be one of the important areas of discussion amongst leaders in Da Nang as to how we balance out the desire to continue the free and open trade with someconcerns that some economies have got about therules of trade.

ꦡ 4. And relatedto that, of course there has been this rise inanti globalisation sentiment and anxieties about things like automation and the loss of job in higherindustries. How is APEC addressing that under Vietnam’s leadership?

We know that we need to focus more on not just theoverall benefit of trade to the economies but the extend to which some parts orsome communities within the economies could get hurt by this and to addressthat Vietnam has put in place an initiative on economic inclusion, financialinclusion and social inclusion to try and ensure that we can design policiesthat benefit more broadly or could also mitigate and cushion part of theeconomies that could be hurt by them. That’s ongoing work.

📖 5. Finally looking ahead,  what do you hope to seeis the legacy of APEC host year 2017 and how would that fit in with APEC’splanning and agenda heading into the new decade

Vietnam’s legacy for hosting APEC has been mostimportantly to keep alive the important initiatives going forwards at thetime of complicated globalisation and concern about some of the directions andkeep that going by being quite inclusive across different economies.

Looking forwards, Vietnam is looking to put in place anagreed process whereby we can can study a direction for APEC from 2020 onwards.A number of APEC programs such as Bogor goals terminate in 2020 and it’s a chance for us to look at whether we want to see APECcontinuing on the same lines or incorporating some new ideas or responding tonew some restructural changes over the next few years.

So Vietnam is arranging approaches for that to start workover the next two years.

Thank you very much!