President of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, Donald Campbell

 He told the media on the sideline of the APEC Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM2) in Hanoi that over the last 28 years, APEC has obtained achievements in various fields, particularly removing trade barriers.

“Our role has been and continued to work at the big issues affecting Asia-Pacific economic cooperation, trade liberalization, opening up the markets, and inclusive growth. So there's a big vision out there. We don't know what the future will be, obviously, because who could have foreseen that you would have had, in the Asia - Pacific region today, the dramatic growth in a country like Vietnam, very dramatic development. So we're gonna see dramatic developments coming in the next 20 and 30 years as well.”

The Summit in Vietnam is expected to generate new momentum for APEC to progress to a new level of sustainable and inclusive development.

Denis Hew, Director of APEC Policy Support Unit, said: “I think we are on the right track but as I mentioned one of the things that we need to do in APEC is maybe to communicate better the benefits of globalization but also to highlight the cost that comes with globalization and what can we do about it. As I mentioned, the last couple of years, APEC including Vietnam has a stronger focus looking at development issues and also inclusiveness and inclusive role. Infact, this year, Vietnam is trying to promote a framework to look at inclusion, how we bring together economic, financial inclusion, social inclusion to a common framework. APEC has been doing this kind of work for a number of years in different working groups and committees but having a comprehensive framework to bring that altogether and to try to move forward would be quite important.”

Delegates expressed their support for multilateral trade and affirmed that trade liberalization will continue to be the core of growth and the APEC vision.