Interview: APEC summit to inherit connectivity, internet economy priories from last year: senior official

Connectivity and internet economy, the two major topics of last year's The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Week held in China, will remain the highlights of this year's APEC summit, said Laura Q. Del Rosario, Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for International Economic Relations.

"China's senior officials have been very constructive in everything we have done in APEC, and we have worked together to really pursue the priorities of Beijing," said Del Rosario during a group interview with Chinese media.

Laura, who is also the chair for the Senior Officials' Meeting of APEC 2015, said China and the Philippines worked together on the urbanization issue and made sure that the steering group on internet economy has moved forward in the past year.

"And of course we worked on FTAAP. We worked with the Committee on Trade and Investment to make sure that the study is in place, and we hand in report updating projects progress in terms of connectivity," said Del Rosario.

During the APEC summit held in Beijing last year, the APEC member economies made a blueprint agreeing to enhance physical, institutional and people-to-people connections by 2025.

The economies also agreed to start a joint strategic study on the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), marking the official launch of the FTAAP process.

According to Del Rosario, during this year's APEC summit, member economies will try to settle on framework on services and proposed roadmap for services competitiveness.

She said her Chinese counterparts have been very cooperative in Philippine initiative in services because services already form a big part of China's GDP.

In addition, Del Rosario said that when the meetings are carried out during the APEC Economic Leaders' Week, the troika will always coming in, which is a symbol that host economies will always carry on and expand agendas handed over by previous hosts.

Troika, as she explained, refer to leaders of the current rotating host and host economies of the previous year and the next year.

"The troika shows that we (the Philippines) have shown our commitment to what Beijing has started, expanded those during our host year, and will turn over what we have expanded plus our own initiatives to Peru. We wish Peru will continue expanding those initiatives," said Del Rosario. Enditem