ACC Secretary-General Attended 19th ASEAN Plus Three AEM Consultations

The 19th ASEAN Plus Three AEM Consultations was held on 4 August 2016 in Vientiane, Lao PDR. The Consultations were chaired by H.E. Mrs. Khemmani Pholsena, Minister of Industry and Commerce of Lao PDR. H.E. Gao Hucheng, Minister of Commerce of China, H.E. Joo Hyunghwan, Minister of Trade, Industry, and Energy of Korea and official from Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan attended the Consultations. H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Centre, H.E. Masataka Fujita, Secretary-General of ASEAN-Japan Centre and H.E. Kim Young-sun, Secretary-General of ASEAN-Korea Centre attended the Consultations upon invitation. They briefed on activities supporting SMEs capacity building and promoting the three Centers’ cooperation, and listened to the comments from the meeting.

Secretary-General Yang briefed on ACC’s work for promoting ASEAN-China functional cooperation since its establishment. She said that ACC was committed to implementing the goals set by leaders of both sides which stated that bilateral trade volume achieved 1 trillion USD by 2020, and the newly added accumulated mutual investment achieved 150 billion USD from 2013-2020. It had put its role as one-stop information and activity center into full play in order to promote trade and investment cooperation. The Centre had made great efforts in publicizing CAFTA policies and building platforms for enterprises especially SMEs of both sides to communicate and cooperate with each other. By organizing forums, dialogues, activities promoting trade and sectoral cooperation, ACC has helped SMES in capacity building. ACC had led several business investment missions to ASEAN countries, invited related authorities to host investment policy briefings, organized business matching with Chinese business associations and actively assisted enterprises’ docking. To support ASEAN SMEs expanding export to Chinese market, ACC pushed forward the establishment of ASEAN Product Trading Centers in Chinese cities, helped them join the exhibitions in China, compiled Guide of China’s Import from ASEAN Member States, and talked to China’s prestigious E-commerce companies into setting up platforms for ASEAN products to access Chinese customers. Meanwhile, ACC had responded actively to the Chairman’s Statement of ASEAN +3 Leaders Meeting to communicate and cooperate with ASEAN-Japan Centre and ASEAN-Korea Centre in strengthening information sharing and jointly implement projects. ACC would like to go ahead hand in hand with all parties to constantly make contributions to comprehensive and deep development of ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership. 

H.E. Masataka Fujita, Secretary-General of ASEAN-Japan Centre and   H.E. Kim Young-sun, Secretary-General of ASEAN-Korea Centre also introduced their own works on promoting SMEs capacity building and cooperation among three Centres.

The meeting positively commented on the work of three Centres. H.E. Mr. Wang Shouwen, Deputy Minister of Commerce of China, on behalf of Minister Gao Hucheng, spoke highly about the large amount of work ACC had done in expanding ASEAN-China economic and trade cooperation and supporting capacity building for SMEs. He said that three Centres had their own advantages and should continue to enhance exchanges among themselves, support private sectors in each country, provide more information to SMEs, and make more efforts and contributions to regional economic development.