AKP Phnom Penh, January 10, 2018 –Cambodia handed over here this evening the co-chairmanship of the Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) Leaders’ Meeting to Laos.
“Cambodia has completed its two-year co-chairmanship with China as permanent co-chair and today we handed over our co-chairmanship to Lao PDR,” Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen said at a joint press conference held after the co-chairmanship handover ceremony.
“Today’s meeting, we reviewed the progress that we have made since the holding of the 1st Leaders’ meeting in Sanya, China in March 2016. Within less than two years, we have developed this new sub-regional mechanism into a full-fledged cooperation scheme,” he added.
All the six leaders reached consensus and adopted two important outcome documents – the Phnom Penh Declaration of the 2nd MLC Leaders’ Meeting and the Five Year Plan of Action of the MLC (2018-2022), he pointed out.
The Phnom Penh Declaration focused mainly on political and security cooperation; the economic and sustainable development cooperation; social, cultural and people-to-people exchange; and cooperation supports.
The six leaders also took note of the 2nd Batch of Projects to be supported by LMC Special Fund 2018 and the Progress Report of the six Joint Working Groups on key priority areas, he said.
A total 132 projects have been approved as the First Batch of Projects of LMC Special Fund 2017.
“We are also very pleased with the substantive progress made in implementing the 45 early harvest projects identified at 1st LMC Leaders’ Meeting and the 13 Initiatives put forward by China at the 2nd LMC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting”, underlined the Cambodian premier.
By Khan Sophirom
