THE 17th APEC ECONOMIC LEADERS' MEETING
Singapore
14 - 15 November 2009
SUSTAINING GROWTH, CONNECTING THE REGION
We, the Leaders of APEC, gathered in Singapore and marked twenty years of cooperation in promoting economic growth and prosperity for our people. In line with new trends and emerging challenges, our agenda has grown in breadth, depth, and complexity. But our common goal remains the same – to support growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, through free and open trade and investment, as embedded in the Bogor Goals.
A year ago, as the world descended into an economic crisis unprecedented in severity since the Great Depression, we resolved that we would aim to overcome the crisis within eighteen months. Today, our robust policy responses have helped to set the stage for recovery. But economic recovery is not yet on a solid footing. Our commitments to reject protectionism and keep our markets open and free have enabled trade to be part of the solution rather than the problem. We will maintain our economic stimulus policies until a durable economic recovery has clearly taken hold.
We will work together to strengthen the momentum towards strong, sustainable and balanced global economic growth, as set out at the recent G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.
Looking beyond supporting the recovery, we recognise the necessity to develop a new growth paradigm for the changed post-crisis landscape, and an expanded trade and investment agenda that will strengthen regional economic integration (REI) in the Asia-Pacific region. We cannot go back to “growth as usual”. We will put in place next year a comprehensive long-term growth strategy that supports more balanced growth within and across economies, achieves greater inclusiveness in our societies, sustains our environment, and which seeks to raise our growth potential through innovation and a knowledge-based economy.
Supporting Balanced Growth
We support the goals of the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth. We join in their commitment to:
- Work together to ensure that our macroeconomic, regulatory and structural policies are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced trajectories of growth;
- Promote current account sustainability and open trade and investment to advance global prosperity and growth sustainability;
- Undertake macro prudential and regulatory policies to help prevent credit and asset price cycles from becoming forces of destabilisation; and
- Promote development and poverty reduction as part of the rebalancing of global growth.
We look forward to a progress report from Finance Ministers next year on their efforts to achieve stronger, more balanced and sustained growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
Structural reform will be critical to strengthening long-term potential output growth and narrowing the development gap between economies, by improving economic flexibility, fostering private demand, and developing financial markets. We agree to reenergise APEC’s work on structural reform, building on the Leaders’ Agenda to Implement Structural Reform towards 2010 (LAISR 2010).
We will leverage APEC’s traditional strengths of voluntary cooperation, capacity building, sharing of best practices, and working with the private sector, to implement necessary reforms in infrastructure development, agriculture/food management, social security, education and workforce training, and regulatory frameworks. We will work with the International Financial Institutions and Multilateral Development Banks to facilitate these efforts. Given APEC’s diversity, these reforms must take into account individual economies’ stage of development, demographic trends, factor and institutional endowments, and comparative advantages.
Fostering Inclusive Growth
We resolve to ensure that future economic growth is more inclusive, to broaden access to opportunities created by growth and to spread the benefits of growth more widely. This will enable our economies to better seize the opportunities created by globalisation and to respond to its challenges. Inclusive growth will strengthen the consensus for free and open trade and investment.
APEC’s inclusive growth agenda will build on ongoing efforts on structural reform under LAISR 2010 and will be driven by two key thrusts. First, we will undertake structural adjustments that will enhance opportunities for all segments of our societies to benefit from growth. Emphasis will be placed on the following specific areas:
- We will support and develop our small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which account for more than 90 percent of all businesses in the APEC region and employ between 50 and 80 percent of the workforce. We will assist SMEs to gain better access to global markets, technology and finance as well as to improve their crisis management capabilities.
- We will put job creation at the heart of our economic strategy and enhance cooperation to address the social implications of globalisation. We will facilitate the retraining, skills upgrading and mobility of our workers so that they can secure jobs, especially in new and growing industries.
- We will focus on enhancing women’s access to education, training, financing, technology, and infrastructure, to maximise their economic opportunities. We welcome continued outreach to women entrepreneurs to grow the positive multiplier effect that women’s economic engagement can have on productivity and sustained growth.
Second, we will strengthen social resilience to help individuals overcome short-term difficulties while providing the incentive for long-term effort, with a focus on the most vulnerable in our economies.
- We will improve outcomes in education and skills-training to enhance long-term economic security.
- We will consider income supplements or earned income tax credits that encourage work and enterprise.
- We will design social safety nets that provide short-term economic security but avoid long-term dependency.
We instruct our Ministers and officials to further advance APEC’s inclusive growth agenda in 2010, and develop a multi-year programme to build capacity for structural reforms and SME development, employment creation, and the development of social safety nets.
Promoting Sustainable Growth
We will ensure that economic growth in our region is consistent with sustainable development. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the biggest global challenges. It will impact each of our economies. We welcome the Declaration of the Leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in L’Aquila and the Leaders’ Statement at the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit, and reaffirm our commitment to tackle the threat of climate change and work towards an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen, within the objective, provisions and principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will need to be accompanied by measures, including financial assistance and technology transfer to developing economies for their adaptation to the adverse impact of climate change.
We recall our Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development in Sydney in 2007, which set out an APEC-wide aspirational target of reducing energy intensity by at least 25 percent by 2030. We applaud the efforts made by individual APEC economies that have unilaterally undertaken measures to reduce emissions. Sustainable forest management plays an important role in mitigating global emissions. We will enhance work on meeting the aspirational goal in the Sydney Declaration of increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares of all types of forests by 2020. We support efforts in the UNFCCC negotiations to agree on actions to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in developing economies. We recognise the role of the oceans in mitigating climate change, and the impact of climate change on oceans and coastal areas, and welcome the Manado Ocean Declaration.
Responding to climate change through transition to green economies also offers opportunities. We will ensure that efforts to address climate change are consistent with our international trade obligations. A key thrust in APEC’s sustainable growth agenda is the APEC Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) Work Programme, under which we will develop and implement a set of concrete actions to support sustainable growth in the region, advance work to increase utilisation and dissemination of EGS, reduce existing barriers and refrain from introducing new barriers to trade and investment in EGS, and enhance capabilities of economies to develop their EGS sectors. We also commit to rationalise and phase out over the medium term fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, while recognising the importance of providing those in need with essential energy services. We will review progress on this at our meeting in 2010. We will also take steps to facilitate the diffusion of climate-friendly technologies, including through economic and technical cooperation (ECOTECH) and capacity building activities.
We will advance work on sharing best practices in energy efficiency with a view to deploying cleaner and more efficient technologies, and welcome the implementation of the voluntary APEC Peer Review on Energy Efficiency. We recognise the role of renewable energy in reducing emissions and encourage its development in the APEC region. We will encourage publication on a regular basis, timely, accurate, and complete data on oil production, consumption, refining and stock levels as appropriate.
Resisting Protectionism
We firmly reject all forms of protectionism and reaffirm our commitment to keep markets open and refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, and instruct our Ministers to continue to regularly review our adherence to these commitments. These efforts reinforce the WTO’s own monitoring mechanism, and act as another bulwark against protectionist pressures by ensuring transparency in the measures taken in response to the crisis.
Source: Press Release APEC 2009
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