Press Releases

DGTI to attend Second APEC Senior Officials' Meeting in 2002
Monday, May 20, 2002

The Director-General of Trade and Industry, Mr Joshua Law, will depart for Merida of Mexico tomorrow (May 21) to attend the second APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Senior Officials' Meeting (SOM II) in 2002 to be held from May 23 to 25.

The focus of SOM II is to prepare for the meeting of APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade to be held on May 29 and 30 in Puerto Vallarta of Mexico. Towards this end, Senior Officials will deliberate on the progress of implementation of the Shanghai Accord announced by APEC Leaders in Shanghai last year. It includes the steps to broaden APEC's action agenda with new issues such as strengthening of the functioning of the markets, work programme to develop appropriate trade policies for the new economy and actions to implement the APEC Trade Facilitation Principles.

Besides, Senior Officials will consider reports from relevant APEC fora on actions to implement APEC Leaders' Statement on Counter-terrorism and APEC's contribution to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Development Agenda. These reports will be submitted to Trade Ministers at their subsequent meeting.

Hong Kong, China will take part in the series of committee/sub-committee meetings before SOM II. These include SOM Sub-committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation, Committee on Trade and Investment, Investment Experts' Group, Market Access Group, Sub-committee on Standards and Conformance, Informal Experts' Group on Business Mobility and e-APEC Task Force, etc.

Member economies of APEC are: Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Chile; the People's Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Japan; the Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; the Republic of the Philippines; Russia; Singapore; Chinese Taipei; Thailand; the United States of America and Viet Nam.

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