Enhancing regional economic cooperation
Enhancing regional economic cooperation and integration
important to
advance the 2030 Agenda in
Asia and the Pacific
Bangkok (ESCAP News) – A United
Nations meeting in Bangkok today concluded
that fostering
regional economic cooperation and integration (RECI)
in
Asia-Pacific holds great potential to further reduce
poverty, and advance
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development.
Organized by the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and
the Pacific (ESCAP), the
high-level dialogue brought together senior
officials and
experts from the region to identify challenges and
propose
recommendations for enhancing RECI to support the
Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs).
The meeting
highlighted that RECI has assumed renewed significance
given
emerging threats from attempts to dislodge
globalization and derail
multilateralism, evolving
political challenges and dynamics, and
opportunities
offered by the all-encompassing 2030 Agenda.
Opening the
two-day meeting, United Nations Under-Secretary General
and
Executive Secretary of ESCAP Dr. Shamshad Akhtar
emphasized that ESCAP has
a long standing mandate for
promoting RECI in Asia and the Pacific. “Over
the past
three decades, RECI has benefited our region significantly
-
powering trade, economic growth and stability. It has
attracted investment
as markets were liberalised and
competitiveness increased, and strengthened
the ability
of policymakers to overcome domestic challenges,” said
Dr.
Akhtar.
“Our region’s experience tells us that
deepening RECI holds great potential
to further reduce
poverty and deliver inclusive sustainable development.
It
needs to be at the heart of our efforts to meet the
SDGs,” she added.
Delegates attending the meeting
emphasized that RECI and the 2030 Agenda
are mutually
reinforcing processes and have to be pursued in a way
that
they support each other. It was noted that RECI can
bring about enormous
opportunities for increasing income
and employment and eventually
contribute to achieving the
SDGs, in particular transboundary goals.
Dr. Akhtar
underscored that the approach to RECI has to be reoriented,
so
it is guided by the framework of the SDGs. The
Executive Secretary
highlighted that RECI can advance
implementation of the SDGs by generating
opportunities
for enhancing employment across the region,
thereby
contributing directly to decent work and economic
growth (Goal 8),
industry, innovation and infrastructure
(Goal 9), and affordable and clean
energy (Goal 7). It
also strengthens the means of implementation
and
contributes towards revitalization of global
partnership for sustainable
development (Goal
17).
During the deliberations, participants proposed four
key recommendations to
advance RECI in Asia and the
Pacific. These included: the full
implementation of the
Framework Agreement on facilitation of
Cross-Border
Paperless Trade, which would further enhance
market integration, reduce
non-tariff barriers and reach
multilateral agreements; the need to build on
existing
bilateral intergovernmental agreements to realise the vision
of
seamless connectivity in the areas of transport,
energy and ICT; the
strengthening of regional financial
cooperation and crisis management
capacity; as well as
collectively addressing shared
vulnerabilities,
particularly for transboundary
disasters.
As its share of world GDP increases and as
protectionist sentiment grows in
Asia-Pacific export
markets, the case for strengthening RECI to
support
intraregional trade and investment as an engine
of regional growth is
clear. Since the onset of the
global financial and economic crisis of 2008,
the share
of Asia-Pacific’s traditional export markets, as a
percentage of
global GDP, has decreased. With a combined
GDP of $27 trillion and a 40 per
cent share of global
export, robust growth in the Asia-Pacific would set it
on
course to become the most important market in the
world.
The first Ministerial Conference on RECI was held
in December 2013, where
representatives of ESCAP member
States adopted the Bangkok Declaration,
setting the
agenda for RECI in the Asia-Pacific
region.