H.E. General Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister of Thailand has assigned H.E. Air Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong, Deputy Prime Minister, as his representative and Head of Delegation of Thailand to attend the 24th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting (AELM) between 19-20 November 2016 in Lima, Republic of Peru. On the same occasion, H.E. Mr. Virasakdi Futrakul, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs of Thailand, will be participating in the 28th APEC Ministerial Meeting (AMM), to be held during 17 – 18 November 2016.

Under this year’s theme “Quality Growth and Human Development”, APEC 2016 will give priorities to four areas of discussions which includes (1) Advancing Regional Economic Integration and Quality Growth (2) Enhancing the Regional Food Market (3) Towards the Modernization of MSMEs in the Asia-Pacific and (4) Developing Human Capital.

Thailand attaches high importance to the APEC meetings this year since it acts as a forum for Thailand to voice her support for trade and investment liberalization, including the realization of the FTA of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) and APEC Services Competitiveness Roadmap (2016-2025), which are key to the achievement of the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment in APEC.  Also, Peru’s theme and priorities for this year have allowed Thailand to take lead in pushing forward the developmental issues such as food security, climate change, rural development, sustainable water management and human capacity development, among others.  These are issues that Thailand has prioritized as Chairman of the Group of 77 as well as in other international forums including G20 Summit, 2nd ACD Summit, BIMSTEC Outreach @ BRICs Summit, ACMECS Summit, ASEAN and the OECD.

In this past year, Thailand and Peru have been supporting the greening of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in APEC at all levels. In collaboration with the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (OSMEP), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand organized an event on greening MSMEs in July 2016 with a main goal of pushing for drafting and endorsement of an “APEC Strategy for Green and Sustainable MSMEs” as a deliverable for APEC Leaders in 2017. Thailand's efforts on this issue was acknowledged by APEC member economies, especially Brunei Darussalam, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Peru, the Philippines, the United States and Viet Nam.  Moreover, Thailand played a crucial role in supporting the extension of the timeframe of the “APEC Education Strategy” from the year 2020 to 2030, in line with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In addition, Thailand has utilized the APEC/ World Bank best practices on Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) to improve public services in order to facilitate business investment, as well as to increase its rankings in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report.  According to the 2017 Report, Thailand ranks 46 out of 190 countries, which is three spots above the previous year.

The APEC Economic Leaders Meeting and the APEC Ministerial Meeting have been taking place since the past 25 years, and were met with tremendous support by all the 21 Economies. This year, Peru is hosting APEC for the 2nd time, after 2009. Thailand will be hosting APEC in 2022 after Viet Nam (2017), Papua New Guinea (2018), Chile (2019), Malaysia (2020) and New Zealand (2021).