Asia-Pacific business leaders call for inclusive growth

Business leaders attending the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) said on Friday that improving both inclusiveness and resilience should be high priority for the APEC agenda.

"Not everyone is equipped to take advantages of opportunities in the increasingly seamless global market ... so our goal is really to be able to offer those benefits to as many people as possible," ABAC chair 2015 Doris Ho said after a council meeting.

Ho said the sustainability of this new prosperity is threatened by constraints to resources like food, energy and other natural resources and by the impact of disasters both natural and otherwise.

The ABAC is pleased to see the progress being made toward the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and that progress needs to be matched by attention to the health of global value and supply chains and the services sector, she noted.

Ho added that the vitality of small, medium and micro sized enterprises (SMMEs) is key to ensuring no-one is left behind as is the inclusion of women. ABAC will be developing recommendations to enhance SMMEs access to ideas, markets, financing, technology and entrepreneurial skills.

ABAC was created by APEC leaders in 1995 to be the primary voice of business in APEC. Each economy has three members who are appointed by their respective leaders. They meet four times a year in preparation for the presentation of their recommendations to the leaders in a dialogue that is a key event in the annual leaders' meeting.