INGENIEUR
INGENIEUR
MSMEs are also well placed to promote entrepreneurship, to benefit from structural reform and to advance sustainability in our economies, maximising the impact of policies, strategies and best practices. Strengthening of MSMEs will imply concrete progress in increasing their innovation capacities and competitiveness, including intellectual property rights commercialisation, work towards guaranteeing access to financial means and capacity building, enhancing their participation in the internet and digital economy through electronic commerce, reducing the technological gap, strengthening ethical business practices to support MSMEs’ growth and cross border trade, progressively inducing a shift into a more sustainable, eco-friendly and green production, and supporting their internationalisation including through the means of ICT.
We welcome the Supporting Industry Initiative and look forward to its implementation in 2017. We recognise the potential of greening MSMEs for sustainable development in APEC and encourage officials to carry out additional work on this topic next year.
We resolve to advance Global Value Chains( GVCs) development, Supply Chain Connectivity, and Supply Chain Resiliency. We commend the solid progress towards the completion of the APEC Trade in Value-Added( TiVA) Database by 2018. We welcome the Report on APEC Developing Economies’ Better Participation in GVCs and encourage further efforts to enable better participation, greater value added and upward mobility of developing economies and MSMEs in GVCs. We recognise the value of using new technologies to achieve greater efficiencies, resilience and co-operation in supply chain connectivity and encourage efforts to explore current and future initiatives toward this end as identified by Ministers.
We also endorse Phase Two of the Supply Chain Framework Action Plan( SCFAP) 2017-2020 and welcome the implementation of the plan next year to continue efforts to enhance trade facilitation and supply chain connectivity in the APEC region.
We recognise that energy access and energy security are critical to the shared prosperity and future of the region. We also underline the importance of stable and transparent world energy markets. We reaffirm our readiness to further energy cooperation, including areas such as renewable energy sectors and energy efficiency to create necessary conditions for trade, investment and economic growth, ensuring that all the economies of the region have access to energy.
We reaffirm our aspirational goals to reduce aggregate energy intensity by 45 % by 2035 and double renewable energy in the regional energy mix by 2030. We reaffirm our commitment to rationalise and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, welcome ongoing peer review and capacity building activities, and encourage further efforts to facilitate subsidy reform.
Towards Real and Functional Connectivity in the Region
We recognise that strengthened connectivity will contribute to opening up new sources of economic growth, fostering inclusive and interconnected development, advancing regional economic integration and bringing APEC economies closer as a community. In this regard, we note with appreciation that significant work has already been done by various APEC fora and working groups in advancing connectivity in the region, including providing support for enhancing subregional connectivity. However, challenges still remain.
We reaffirm, therefore, our commitment to the overarching goal of a seamlessly and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia-Pacific by 2025, express our appreciation for the efforts and accomplishments of APEC members in implementing the APEC Connectivity Blueprint 2015-2025, and encourage the use of policy dialogues noted in the Blueprint to exchange best practices and information on relevant topics.
We reiterate the importance of people-to-people connectivity and remain committed to its improvement through, inter alia, further development of tourism, cultural exchange, mobility of business people, cross-border education and travel facilitation.
We affirm our commitment to promote investment with a focus on infrastructure in terms of both quantity and quality. We reiterate the importance
60 VOL 69 JANUARY-MARCH 2017