Malaysia calls for strengthening Asean chairmanship beyond one-year role

The Star

Malaysia is committed to strengthening its role as Asean chair through sustained cooperation among member nations, beyond its one-year tenure, said Liew Chin Tong.  Speaking at a dialogue session during the 25th Asia News Network Anniversary on Thursday (Sept 5), the Deputy Investment, Trade and Industry Minister emphasised the importance of securing agreement from Asean members to adopt Malaysia’s Asean Community Vision 2045 as a long-term development guide for the next 20 years.  On media participation, Liew noted that Malaysia plans to enhance cooperation within Asean by convening economic and business editors in Kuala Lumpur next year.  Read more at https://tinyurl.com/y2daacpu   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00In our one year in ASEAN, how would you, what's the initiative?

00:05If I may, I say number one, very importantly, we must get everyone together to agree on the broader 2045 vision.

00:14Number two, if we have the political will and our colleagues in other countries have the political will,

00:22we should strengthen the secretariat.

00:25You have pointed out exactly the main problem of ASEAN.

00:29Every year come by and go, and in the form of rotating chair, very little can be achieved for the longer time.

00:39So it's important that I think we need to strengthen ASEAN secretariat,

00:42where we have a clear vision, strengthen ASEAN chair,

00:45and increasingly I hope, personally what I do is that I try to rope in the Filipinos with us in some of our activities.

00:53I hope my government will practice it across the board, because the Filipinos will be the next chair.

01:00So if we can gradually evolve a troika, that means this current chair, next chair, the following chair,

01:09they can work together a bit like the EU, it will help a lot more.

01:14Pavel, you, listening to you, I was just marveling over, you know,

01:19the remarkable similarities between ASEAN's journey and ANN's journey,

01:24especially when you talked about the secretariat and the problem of finding enough resources for it.

01:31But having said that, I want to ask you, ANN's mission is bringing people closer, bringing Asia closer,

01:39and I want to ask you, as you assume the chairmanship,

01:43can we expect some new initiatives to bring people closer, or some thinking on those lines?

01:50We are thinking whether we can bring together, we were only thinking about ASEAN,

01:56but maybe we can expand this to Asian editors,

02:00but thinking to bring together economic or business editors from ASEAN, from around ASEAN,

02:08to come to Kuala Lumpur in January, to think about what would be the future economic narrative,

02:15and also future ideas of how we should move forward as an organisation, ASEAN,

02:23and maybe also moving beyond.

02:26Because I think in our respective reporting, in our daily reporting work,

02:34we are focusing on our national economy.

02:37So we describe to the public our national economy.

02:43But we have not done enough, I think, and maybe this time we have done a lot,

02:47but I think in general we have not done enough in explaining economy to the wider audience,

02:56and explaining interconnectedness between your country and my country,

03:01between the supply chain, the onion from India to Malaysia.

03:06We have not brought our people to understand this interconnectedness.

03:11So I hope actually, if we can pull this off, we are hoping to do it in January,

03:18to bring the business and economic editors to come together,

03:24to think about how to explain our economic relationship moving forward.

03:31Just let me bring one more point.

03:34This always troubles me that my ministry, the daily language that we use is investment and trade,

03:42because it is in the name.

03:45But I always think that country and country's relationship cannot be just about trade and investment,

03:52because trade and investment sometimes sounds very transactional.

03:56So I am trying to promote the use of the word economic cooperation.

04:01That means I don't have to be winning over you just on every count.

04:08I can cooperate with you, we can grow together,

04:11and I think we can build a lot more global economic cooperation,

04:16so that we grow together and we enrich each other's economy.

04:26For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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