APEC Official Calls to Consider All Sides of Economic Development

All sides of the economic development within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) bloc should be considered, in muting environmental impact and human agenda, Philippines' Foreign Affairs Undersecretary, chairperson of APEC Senior Officials' meeting (SOM) Laura Del Rosario said Friday.

MANILA (Sputnik) – Philippines host this year's APEC. Since Thursday, the APEC summit has been underway in Manila, bringing together 21 Pacific Rim member economies. The meeting is scheduled to culminate with the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting on November 18-19.

"But somewhere along the way, we all recognise that we do need to have a development agenda so the women issue came in, human resources, and then of course now we are talking about the environmental impact of what we do. We are talking about health, water, food, nutrition, challenges of urbanisation," Del Rosario said.

She stressed that at the initiation of ten APEC SOM meetings, the idea was to facilitate trade and investment "because these two factors underpin our economic development."

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), established in 1989, promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

The APEC forum includes Russia, the United States, China, Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, Peru, chili, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Brunei.