President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc at the 29th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. VNA/VNS Photo Thống Nhất

HÀ NỘI — Leaders of member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) met yesterday afternoon for a dialogue session and had lunch with distinguished guests, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The meeting, which is a part of the 29th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, is an opportunity for leaders of APEC member economies and guests from different regions of the world to find ways to overcome obstacles, advance cooperation, and accelerate growth while exchanging ideas on common regional and global concerns.

At the dialogue, the leader highlighted the current global economic difficulties, especially the risks of economic recession and climate change. They also agreed that global coordination and cooperation are essential for successfully responding to today's challenges.

They exchanged ideas and practical solutions to accelerate the economic recovery process, emphasising the requirement to boost international trade and investment.

In addition, the parties shared their experience and policies in clean energy transition, digital transformation, and green and inclusive growth, ensuring people's lives amid rising inflation.

President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc said that the cooperation potential between APEC and the European Union (EU), as well as Gulf countries, is enormous, thanks to the high complementarity among economies and existing cooperation platforms in terms of trade, economy, and development orientation. On that basis, the President proposed three ideas to maximise the potential and promote inter-regional cooperation.

Firstly, strengthen cooperation to facilitate trade and investment by identifying bottlenecks to jointly find solutions, improving the efficiency of implementation of existing free trade agreements, studying the possibility of forming new trade agreements, promoting international economic connectivity and linkage initiatives, strengthening trade and investment promotion activities in each other's markets, and ensuring transparency in economic and trade policies.

He said countries should strengthen cooperation to facilitate trade and investment by identifying bottlenecks to jointly find solutions, improving the efficiency of implementation of existing free trade agreements, studying the possibility of forming new trade agreements, promoting international economic connectivity and linkage initiatives, strengthening trade and investment promotion activities in each other's markets, and ensuring transparency in economic and trade policies.

He also suggested economies share experiences and have policy dialogues on green growth and digital transformation, encourage APEC's specialised working groups to exchange with partners from the EU, ASEAN, and the Regional Cooperation Council (GCC), and study the possibility of implementing a number of pilot projects on multi-stakeholder cooperation in response to climate change, environmental protection, and e-commerce.

Last but not least, the economies should study the possibility of forming an annual dialogue mechanism between APEC and representatives of the EU, GCC, ASEAN, and some other regional organisations to enhance coordination between forums/organisations and maintain cooperation momentum, said the President.

President Phúc said that the dialogue is the beginning of new, effective cooperation programmes that will bring benefits to all parties and work towards common goals of sustainable and inclusive development. VNS