Thai PM stresses importance of connectivity among APEC countires

BALI, Indonesia, October 8 (TNA) – Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called for member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to give their support to programmes that help promote interconnection among countries in the region. Yingluck told government leaders attending the second retreat session on APEC’s vision of connectivity in the evolving regional and international architecture during the ongoing 21st APEC meeting on Tuesday to support regional programmes such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) economic corridor networks and the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) cooperation framework, which supports land connectivity between Asia and Europe. She said these programmes would enable APEC members to expand cooperation among the regions and also help move forward the ASEAN Community (AC), scheduled to be implemented at the end of 2015. Stressing that efforts to promote regional connectivity has to start within a country, Yingluck said her government has decided to invest 2.2 trillion baht on basic infrastructure projects, mostly involving transportation. Yingluck said the government has also decided to improve its international airports to serve about 60 million passengers annually. The Thai premier added that Thailand will host the ‘Connect Asia-Pacific Summit’ in November and it hopes that the meeting could help boost cooperation in information communication technology development, which would help support environment friendly economic growth of countries in the region. (TNA)