East Asia Countries Propose Initiatives For Economic Prosperity
By Siti Noor Afera Abu
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 25 (Bernama) -- East Asia Participating Countries (EPCs) are proposing initiatives to maintain the region’s economic prosperity, amid global uncertainties, said Australia's Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell.
“It is an unstable world that we're working in at the moment, so we have to be imaginative in terms of things that we do to ensure the prosperity of our people,” he told reporters after the 13th East Asia Summit (EAS) Economic Ministers’ Meeting today.
Meanwhile, ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) Meeting chair Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz highlighted that ASEAN’s two-way merchandise trade with non-ASEAN EAS participating countries stood at US$1.9 trillion in 2024.
At the same time, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows from non-ASEAN EAS participating countries into ASEAN were at US$92.8 billion.
“These figures reaffirm the importance of EPCs as ASEAN’s trusted economic partners and highlight the immense potential for deepening trade, investment, and people-to-people connectivity across the region,” he said in his opening remarks at the EAS meeting.
Tengku Zafrul said the ministers exchanged views on the regional and global economic outlook for 2026 and deliberated on advancing environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG)-driven economic integration under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Strategic Plan 2026–2030.
They had also reviewed recent economic developments and their implications for ASEAN’s trade, investment, and integration agenda.
The East Asia Summit involved eighteen participating countries, namely the ten ASEAN member states, as well as Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.
-- BERNAMA