Recommendations from the Business Forum
- Ministers to recognize that new technology can be used to accelerate economic development, but this enabling infrastructure needs to be promoted to SMEs and consumers, and made accessible at affordable costs.
- Ministers to acknowledge that governments of member economies should provide strategic education investments. This should include women, the young and indigenous peoples, to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship required for knowledge economy.
- Ministers to recognize training as a mutual benefit through which SMEs could gain understanding to make the business transitions afforded by liberalization and ICT. In addition, hardware and software suppliers have a role to play in training by contributing to the creation of an expanded market.
- Ministers to acknowledge that the diversity and depth of capital markets in the more developed economies should be the benchmark for action plans by individual economies to reduce the unevenness of access to finance by SMEs in the APEC economies.
- Ministers to recognize that globalization presented a regulatory challenge to remove legal and non-tariff Barriers that impede business efficiency and discourage FDI. There is urgent need for new laws and regional harmonization on standards of security and authentication against cybercrime.
- Ministers to acknowledge that better benchmarking, compilation and reporting of key SME data is necessary to improve public policy and attract greater investor capital and strategic alliances.