APEC 2020 an important event for Malaysia – envoy

KUALA LUMPUR: Next year will be an important year for Malaysia as it will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2020 summit.

Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia Andrew Goledzinowski said hosting the summit will also be significant for Malaysia as next year’s summit is the year where new goals and priorities of APEC will be established.

“Next year, they have to find new target and priority and (whether the target and priority is) to be called KL Goals or Putrajaya Goals, but it will be done under Malaysia’s leadership, and it will be an important year for Malaysia,” he told Bernama recently.

The last time Malaysia hosted the APEC summit was in 1998.

Goledzinowski said APEC periodically decides on its long term objectives, and the last goals adopted by APEC in 1994 was called the Bogor Goals.

It was reported recently that Chile had called off the APEC 2019 summit – that was scheduled to be held on November 16 to 17 in Santiago – due to anti-government protests.

According to apec.org, leaders of the APEC member states announced and adopted “the longterm goal of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific” called “Bogor Goals” during the APEC summit in Indonesia in 1994. The Bogor Goals has inspired member economies to pursue individual and collective actions to reduce barriers to trade and investment, one result of which was a region-wide drop in average tariffs – from 17 per cent in the 1980s to around 5 per cent yesterday.

APEC is a series of high-level meetings culminating in a summit attended by leaders from the 21-member cooperation forum.