BEIJING, China, Nov. 11 (PNA) — World leaders participating in the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit here Tuesday put more emphasis on strengthening comprehensive connectivity and infrastructure development to help open up new sources of economic growth and promote cooperation.
In the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders’ Declaration, the leaders commended the achievements already made by APEC members under their connectivity and infrastructure development cooperation.
They endorsed the APEC Connectivity Blueprint (Annex D), noting that they are committed to implementing the APEC Connectivity Blueprint and achieving the overarching goal of strengthening physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity.
They also recognized efforts to promote public private partnership (PPP) on Infrastructure, such as compiling demonstrative infrastructure PPP projects, advancing the work of the PPP Experts Advisory Panel, and strengthening capacity building of Indonesia’s Pilot PPP Center.
“We endorse the Implementation Roadmap to Develop Successful Infrastructure PPP Projects in the APEC Region to guide APEC’s future work in this aspect,” they said in the declaration.
“We strongly support and welcome the establishment of the PPP Center within the Chinese Ministry of Finance as a center of excellence.”
At the same time, they want member economies to strengthen energy infrastructural development and connectivity, such as oil and natural gas pipelines and transmission networks, LNG terminals, smart grids and distributed energy systems.
All member economies must adopt more open, convenient and friendly immigration policies and take effective measures to promote the mobility of business personnel, tourists, researchers, students and labor in the region, the declaration said.
Initiatives and activities dedicated to further promoting APEC cross-border education must be supported, they said, welcoming the establishment of the APEC Higher Education Research Center and the APEC Scholarship Initiative.
The leaders also supported the targets set forth during the 8th APEC Tourism Ministers’ Meeting to receive 800 million international tourist arrivals in APEC member economies by 2025.
President Aquino joined his fellow leaders at the closing session of the summit near Yanqi Lake.
The leaders had a “family” photo session and a tree planting event at the venue. (PNA)