PM calls for ACD ‘to help build an Asian Community’
Play
PRIME MINISTER Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha called Monday for regional inclusiveness and sustainable development from senior key delegates from Asian countries at the 2nd Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) summit.
During the opening ceremony at the Foreign Ministry, Prayut highlighted the need for states to realise the ACD Vision 2030, one of several goals of the Bangkok-hosted summits – to try to achieve an “Asian Community”.
“[It would] envisage Asia as a continent of inclusive and sustainable growth,” Prayut said, with “seamless connectivity, people-centred stability and peace, dynamic innovation, research and development, as well as qualified and capable human resources”.
Such qualities were essential to tackle looming global challenges over the next 14 years, Prayut said, referring to the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which the ACD Vision aims to be in synch with.
To do that, he said, they needed to drive six pillars of cooperation, namely inter-linked dealings on food, water, and energy security; connectivity; science, technology and innovation; education and human resource development; culture and tourism, and promoting inclusive and sustainable development.
These pillars could be absorbed in the public, private and people sectors and promoted together to create inclusiveness that will help formulate policy towards sustainable growth in Asia, he said.
This would utilise the status of “One Asia, Diverse Strengths” that would help the continent, sharing one-third of global GDP and one-sixth of global financial reserves, to boost the currently stalled world economy through wide ranges of capabilities, he said.
