Top business heads flying in for ACD meet

The meeting is being held in parallel with the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) forum, which will bring delegates from 34 Asian nations to the Foreign Ministry tomorrow for the second ACD summit.

Prayut and other leaders will meet representatives of the business community, including the chairman of the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, on Monday during an interactive session.

Ma’s presence will emphasise the business aspect of the ACD summit because the Chinese billionaire will exchange views on financial technology with Asian leaders, according to Chutintorn Gongsakdi, Foreign Ministry director-general of the International Economic Affairs Department.

It will be the second time Prayut meets the visionary business executive after they first met in China during the G20 meeting last month. 

Ma will extend his stay in Thailand for another day to convey his ideas and vision to Thailand’s business community, which is struggling with the global slowdown.

Under the theme “One Asia, Diverse Strengths”, the second summit tomorrow in Bangkok will focus on strengthening diversities to drive development for economic equilibrium and reducing inequality in the region, Chutintorn said.

The summit will produce two main documents: the ACD Vision for Asia Cooperation 2030 and the Bangkok Declaration, he said.

The documents will reflect shared aspirations of ACD members in shaping regional cooperation for the next 14 years while promoting beneficial and constructive action that will drive the dialogue towards building a stable, inclusive and sustainable Asian community, he said.

Leaders attending this year’s event represent all regions of Asia including Southeast, East and South Asia as well as the Middle East, including representatives from Kuwait, Brunei, Iran, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, China, South Korea, Myanmar, Bhutan, Cambodia, Malaysia and Laos, among others.

Deputy Government Spokesman Maj-General Weerachon Sukondhapatipak said yesterday that the ACD meeting reflected the international community’s confidence in Thailand’s leadership and economic capabilities. 

He said a successful meeting would help to boost the region’s growth and Thailand would stand to benefit. 

The spokesman called on Thais to be good hosts during the event so that participants would be impressed. He said preparations had been made in terms of welcoming guests, organising the event, security and traffic.

Some roads near meeting venues will be closed to traffic today and tomorrow. 

The ACD was born in Thailand in 2002 when foreign ministers from 18 Asian countries met at the resort beach of Cha-am to exchange views on cooperation for mutual benefit. There are already several similar cooperation frameworks and forums in Asia including Asean plus dialogue partners and other sub-regional forums.

However, the ACD is a continent-wide forum, the first of its kind in Asia. The forum aims to incorporate every Asian country and build an Asian community without duplicating other organisations or creating a bloc in opposition to others, according to its official document.

Initiated by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and strongly pushed by then-foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai, the ACD receded from public attention after the end of the Thaksin administration. The ACD has held annual ministerial meetings since 2002 but these were mostly held outside Thailand except for a retreat meeting in Chiang Mai in 2003.

Since then, ministerial meetings of the ACD have been held in China, Pakistan, Qatar, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Kuwait, Tajikistan and Bahrain before returning to Thailand in March this year, although the last event drew little media attention.

Over its 14-year history summits bringing together heads of government took place for the first time in Kuwait 2012, followed by the planned meeting today in Bangkok.

At the first summit, when Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra was prime minister, Thailand proposed ACD regional connectivity and prepared a blueprint on ACD Enhanced Regional Connectivity, which was meant to boost trade, investment and “people-to-people” contact by drawing on the expertise of existing areas of cooperation.

China’s new Silk Road was also widely discussed during the first summit as Beijing gives higher importance to the ACD compared to other major Asian nations such as India and Japan.

However, some observers said they did not have high expectations for the summit. The ACD has 20 areas of cooperation in six priority sectors but has hardly produced any concrete benefits for members over the past decade.

Less than half of the 34 members give priority to the ACD meetings and cooperation, according to some evaluations. Many countries will not send their top leaders to this summit. China is sending Vice President Li Yuanchao, while Asean heads of state from Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia will attend.