13 Quotes from President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Jr of the Republic of the Philippines at the APEC CEO Summit

President of the Republic of the Philippines Ferdinand E. Marcos, Jr delivered remarks during the 2023 APEC CEO Summit and spoke about seizing opportunity to collaborate for sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the region.

    On addressing global challenges through regional economic cooperation

1. “As member economies of APEC, we are accountable to our people and future generations to deliver sustained growth and prosperity.”
2. “Cognizant that our priorities, our strategies, and approaches differ, platforms such as APEC prove instrumental in finding policy congruencies and coordination of our efforts.”
3. “The issues that we face – supply chain shocks, food and energy insecurity, natural disasters, health emergencies, the climate crisis – demand that we augment our efforts to address, mitigate and pre-empt the negative economic impacts that they bring.”
4. “We must leverage APEC’s core value propositions as the premier regional forum in the Asia-Pacific, incubator of innovative ideas, pathfinder for collaborative solutions to emerging trade issues, and platform for forward-looking and responsive economic and trade policies.”
5. “We must act regionally; we must also shrink our intentions globally by finding coherence in our workstreams with those of other economies of the world and other regional and international organizations.”
6. “Global and regional economic governance platforms such as APEC are geared towards averting conflict because sustained prosperity and progress are only possible in a world that is at peace, which in turn must be a peace that is built on a solid economic foundation.”
   
   On sustainable development and inclusive economic growth
7. “The race to sustainability comes with the risk of escalating protectionism.”
8. “We must intensify capacity building, economic cooperation and technical assistance, knowledge and data sharing among our economies so that each is empowered and provided with the tools toward sustainable development, while creating complementarities in our economies and further opportunities for trade and investment.”
9. “Disadvantaged groups should also be capacitated and empowered to assist and align with our strategies to ensure bandwagon support for sustainability and an expeditious and decisive push essential in the carving of a collectively beneficial path forward.”
10. “They do not only provide the most important voice in terms of the bare minimum that we should be according, but also knowledge, skills, and talent so far untapped or underutilized in our efforts, especially toward the circular economy, environmental preservation and protection, utilizing indigenous sources and nature-based solutions, and adopting sustainable practices.”
11. Our table must continue to expand to accommodate seats to represent all our people, and the US hosting of APEC this year has expertly demonstrated how this should be done through stakeholder engagements, policy dialogues, and expert consultations.”
12. “But as decision-makers, ours is the role to take heed and constructively discuss how to stitch our differing contexts together and multi-directional approaches so they move as one.”
13. “Policy dialogues, especially those that promote inclusion should, therefore, remain an important tool in APEC to allow us to coordinate our efforts, learn from our individual experience, and facilitate convergences in our economies that will narrow the income divide, while affording especially developing economies with some policy space to identify and to explore priorities that are specific to its context.”