Director-General of Trade and Industry to attend APEC Senior Officials Meeting (Monday, September 18, 2000)

The Director-General of Trade and Industry, Mr. Joshua Law, will leave today (September 18) to attend the Third Senior Officials Meeting (SOM III) of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to be held on September 20-23 in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam.

SOM III will be the last formal meeting of APEC Senior Officials this year. At the meeting, Senior Officials will finalise APEC's work in various areas to prepare for the Joint Ministerial Meeting and Economic Leaders' Meeting in November. To this end, Senior Officials will exchange views on how APEC should respond to the challenges of globalisation and the advent of knowledge-based economy and new economy to prepare for Leaders' discussion in November.

Senior Officials will discuss a number of trade and investment liberalisation, facilitation and economic cooperation issues. They include APEC's contributions to the strengthening of the multilateral trading system, proposals to strengthen the functioning of markets, electronic commerce, trade facilitation, initiatives on human resource development and APEC's outreach to the community, etc.

Senior Officials will also review progress of the Internet-based electronic Individual Action Plan system to report member economies' commitments to achieve APEC goal of free and open trade and investment.

A number of committees/sub-committees will meet before SOM III, also in Bandar Seri Begawan. They include the Committee on Trade and Investment, Economic Committee, Sub-Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation, Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance, Sub-Committee on Customs Procedures, Investment Experts Group, Government Procurement Experts Group, Group on Services, Market Access Group, Trade Facilitation Task Force, Working Group on Trade Promotion, Infrastructure Workshop, and SOM Ad hoc Advisory Group on Gender Integration.

The Hong Kong, China delegation to SOM III and related meetings comprise officials from a number of policy bureaux and departments. Among them is Mr. Nigel Shipman, Director of Government Supplies, who attended the Government Procurement Experts' Group meeting on September 14 and 15 to present Hong Kong's newly developed electronic tendering system. In addition, a representative from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and a number of business representatives, including Sir Gordon Wu of Hopewell Holdings Ltd., attended a meeting on trade promotion on September 18 and a conference on standards and conformance on September 15 and 16 respectively.

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.