APEC Peru 2008 Year Begins

The APEC Peru 2008 Year will officially begin on Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 12 m, in a ceremony that will take place at the Government Palace. The announcement will be made by the President of the Republic, Mr. Alan García Pérez, and will also be attended by Vice Admiral (r) Luis Giampietri Rojas, President of the APEC 2008 High Level Commission and its members; the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Antonio García Belaúnde; of Economy and Finance, Luis Carranza; and of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Mercedes Araoz; as well as other authorities and personalities.

The formal ceremony will also be attended by representatives from the 21 APEC member economies and will render official the host role of our country throughout 2008. A total of a hundred twenty-seven (127) meetings will take place in Lima, El Callao and other nine cities of the country: Arequipa, Chiclayo, Cusco, Iquitos, Piura, Puno, Tacna, Tumbes, and Trujillo, in a decentralizing effort beyond compare. Membership of this Forum becomes a privileged platform to access product and capital markets from the Asia Pacific and is part of the national integration project to face the challenges of globalization. The theme for the present year is “A new commitment to the development of the Asia - Pacific”, which specially emphasizes public-private partnerships and the participation of international financial institutions.

Throughout 2008, more than ten thousand delegates from the Asia - Pacific will attend different kinds of APEC meetings: Ministerial meetings will deal with topics such as Trade, Tourism, Education, Finance and Small and Medium Enterprise; in other meetings, such as conferences, seminars and workshops, senior officials will come together to deal with subjects such as Fisheries, Marine Resource Conservation, Genetic Resources, Gender, Education, APEC Academic Matters, APEC Study Centers Consortium, Energy, Telecommunications, Transportation, Customs Procedures, Good Regulatory Practices, Intellectual Property, Chemical Metrology, Standards and Conformance, Secure Trade in the APEC Region, Security, Business Licenses, Small and Medium Enterprise, Innovation Management and APEC Youth.

The first APEC 2008 events will take place in Lima from February 19 to March 3, 2008, and will include meetings from the Working Groups, Committees and Sub-Committees and the Senior Officials Meetings (SOM I), with a total attendance of one thousand delegates from the 21 Member Economies.

And finally, during the Summit Week, that will take place in Lima on November 16 to 23, 2008, Leaders from all 21 APEC Member Economies will meet, as a conclusion of the work carried out throughout this week by the ABAC or APEC Business Advisory Council, the 20th Joint Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Ministerial Meeting, the CEO Summit, and the Concluding Senior Officials Meeting.

Peru entered APEC in 1998 together with Russia and Vietnam, and since then, it is part of the most dynamic economic community the world, accounting for 48% of the global trade and including more than 2,600 million inhabitants in the Asia-Pacific Region.