Indonesian president calls for increased investment in APEC region

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Sunday called for more investment and better infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region to stimulate economic growth. While delivering a keynote speech at APEC CEO Summit, Yudhoyono said APEC is in the position to play its part in the prolonged global economic recovery process. "We need to intensify efforts to stimulate investment with our region so as to maintain growth and create jobs. There are tremendous opportunities for this as we are experiencing rapid growth of middle class," said the president. He underlined the need to develop more and better infrastructure as an essential element for promoting connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region, which will not only help facilitate trade and investment but also boost job creation. "APEC needs to tackle inefficiency in the supply chain, we have to make it easier, cheaper and faster to conduct trade in goods and services across the borders,"Yudhoyono said. In this regard, "we continue to create a better business and investment environment and address many of the challenges," he added. On Saturday, participants of the APEC ministerial meeting endorsed the multi-year plan on infrastructure development and investment that aims to assist economies to improve the investment environment, promote public-private partnership and enhance government capacity and coordination in preparing and executing infrastructure projects. The APEC forum has grown to encompass 21 members across the Asia-Pacific region, accounting for approximately 55 percent of global GDP and 44 percent of world trade, according to data provided on its official website. APEC economies remain a crucial source of global growth with an estimated growth rate of 6.3 percent in 2013 and 6.6 percent in 2014 as forecast by the IMF. The rate is more than twice the world average. Since its inception in 1996, the CEO summit has become the premier business event in the Asia-Pacific region. It is usually held just prior to the two-day APEC leaders' summit and overlap with the latter by one day.