Good morning and thank you for the invitation and address members of the American Chambers here in Singapore. I would like to focus my talk on the theme and priorities this year.

I like to begin by saying that the outcome of the Seattle WTO Ministerial Meeting did not help much what APEC has been trying to achieve. While many factors have been attributed to the failure, one dimension that stands out is - WTO and APEC need to devote more emphasis on their outreach.

We all know that trade and investment liberalisation is good. We all know that those economies practising open trading system par better than the others that do not. However, the lesson we have seen from Seattle suggested that globalisation does divide people. It marginalized people.

While liberalisation is not necessarily bad, most people have thought otherwise. APEC should benefits its people. This brings me to this year’s agenda.

The main thrust of this theme - delivering to the community - is to:

Embodied the importance of developing more open markets as well as investing in the people and businesses which operate in those markets;
Aimed to catalyse the advancement of technology as well as taking APEC closer to the new opportunities brought by technology; and
Aimed to show that while much of APEC’s work is investing in the future, APEC did have a valuable selection of ‘products’ which are of relevance to the wider community in their daily lives.
To be more specific, this year’s priorities building upon the robust outcomes of Leader’s Meetings in Auckland last year, include:

Preserving and strengthening of markets;
Continued effort to advance APEC’s main agenda- Trade & Investment Liberalisation and Facilitation.
Focus on the development to human resources with particular emphasis on capacity-building
A Focus on SME; and
A strengthening of work in the areas of information and communication technology
APEC, committed to trade and investment liberalisation, will continue to support and contribute to Multilateral Trading System. The Trade Ministers Meeting in June (Darwin) and The Leaders Meeting in November (Brunei) will provide opportunities to retreat political support to the WTO.

To ensure that APEC has substance and relevance in the difficulties face by the multilateral trading system, APEC intends to enhance its outreach activities to its own community. As a first step to better communicate APEC’s work, Secretariat will be re-developing its website to provide easier access to information for business and for the wider community.

APEC mean more to business and its community.

Brunei is very keen to see implementation of the task Leaders/ministers mandated Senior Officials at last year Meeting. APEC will undertake to make its Individual Action Plan more user-friendly and functional for business planners. We hope to finalise this project by October this year.

A key role of facilitation in promoting regional trade and investment was recognized by the decision to develop APEC Principles of Trade Facilitation to assist APEC policy makers in formulating trade and investment measures which are pro-business, and developing programmes to implement the principles.

Senior Officials identified a number of activities to progress work on strengthening markets, including the development of a programme to help economies implement APEC’s menu of options for investment liberalisation and assistance for economies implementing APEC’s principles to enhance competition. More projects will be developed during the year.

Small and Medium Enterprise is one of the priorities I have mentioned. A SME Ministerial Meeting is being planned in June this year, in conjunction with SME Business Forum, E-Commerce Workshop, E-Trade Fair and Women Leaders Network. I have brought some brochures for you and Brunei is keen to have your participation.

This year’s SME Ministerial will focus on Strengthening Markets and Entrepreneurs. Four areas that will be emphasized are:

Human Resources development
Information and Communication Technology
Financing SMR, and
Strategic Alliance between SMEs and Large Firms.
One of the sub-themes this year - creating new opportunities - takes into account the graving importance to knowledge-based economics and the potential, for business, in the area of information and telecommunication technology.

To provide coherence and community relevance to now wide-ranging APEC agenda, Brunei would like to see that APEC matters more to the community including the youth and women. As I said, Women Business Network Meeting and Youth Activities are being planned this year. APEC is also concerned with the new phenomenon – the digital divide.

This year our works in the economic and technical co-operations will be advanced. It is felt that building the foundations of the new economy through capacity building would play an essential role in preparing economics to be better able to reap the potential benefit of the new opportunities.

Thank you