UNION Minister for Investment and Foreign Economic Relations, U Aung Naing Oo participated at the 20th ASEAN Economic Community Council Meeting yesterday via videoconference.
The Meeting was chaired by Dato Dr Amin Liew Abdullah, Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II of Brunei Darussalam, and attended by ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Council Ministers, ASEAN Digital Ministers, Senior-Economic Officials, Secretary General of ASEAN and officials.
In the first session, the interface between the AEC Council Ministers and the ASEAN Digital Ministers was held. At the interface session, the ministers exchanged views on creating greater synergies between the relevant sectoral bodies to carry forward ASEAN’s Digital Transformation Agenda.
Then, the ministers endorsed the Leaders’ Statement on Advancing Digital Transformation in ASEAN which will be submitted to the 38th and 39th ASEAN Summits on 26 October 2021. After that the 20th ASEAN Economic Community Council Meeting was continued and the AEC Council Ministers noted the implementation status of the Priority Economic Deliverables (PEDs) of Brunei Darussalam under its ASEAN Chairmanship in 2021. The AEC Council Ministers exchanged the view on the follow-up action on the recommendations of the report of the Mid-Term Review of the AEC Blueprint 2025 and the development of ASEAN Community Post 2025 Vision.
Then, the ministers discussed and agreed on the draft text of the AEC Section of the ASEAN Chair’s Statement of 38th and 39th ASEAN Summits, the AEC council report to the leaders and AEC outcome documents for submission to the Summits.
The ministers also witnessed the handover of ASEAN Chairmanship from Burnie to Cambodia, and Cambodia presented its priority economic deliverables for 2022. At the meeting, Union Minister highlighted that the digital transformation was concerned with the cross-sectorial matter, the coordination among all sectoral bodies should be to streamline and reduce the duplication of work in order to increase productivity with use of less resources.
He also suggested that ASEAN’s Digital Transformation Agenda would be more greatly impact in helping the region’s recovery from COVID-19 and to transform the region into an ASEAN Digital Economy based on the principle of no ASEAN Member States (AMS) is left behind.
He suggested that the programme of IAI Workplan should provide the capacity building programme for the transformation of digital technology in order to narrow the development gap. Senior officials from Ministry of Investment and Foreign Economic Relations also attended the meeting.—MNA
