ASEAN Seeks Amro Expertise To Respond Better To Geoeconomic Challenges
By Zufazlin Baharuddin
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 (Bernama) -- ASEAN is looking to leverage the expertise of the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) to better understand and respond to geoeconomic challenges facing the region.
Deputy Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Liew Chin Tong said the engagement underscores ASEAN’s commitment to strengthening economic resilience amid a rapidly changing global landscape, including shifts in trade, investment and strategic economic relations.
“We want to engage them just to see what they are doing and how we can continue to work on monitoring geoeconomic challenges in ASEAN,” he told Bernama after his bilateral meeting with AMRO director Yasuto Watanabe.
Also present at the meeting was AMRO group head, strategy and coordination, Hideaki Hamada.
Liew noted that the ASEAN Geoeconomics Task Force presented the ASEAN Geoeconomic Report at the ASEAN Joint Foreign and Economic Ministers’ (AMM-AEM) Meeting last Saturday, the first such joint meeting in over two decades.
He expressed hope that ASEAN will continue to produce the report every year with the meeting becoming an annual event monitored by AMRO to help ASEAN members discuss and act on geoeconomic challenges.
According to the chairman’s statement of the meeting last Saturday, ASEAN Ministers for Foreign and Economic Affairs have recommended that their officials explore the idea of institutionalising the joint AMM-AEM Meeting as an annual standing engagement to be convened prior to the ASEAN summits.
Today’s bilateral meeting was held in conjunction with the 47th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits hosted by Malaysia from Oct 26 to 28 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.
-- BERNAMA
