- His Excellency Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China;
- Excellencies, Heads and Leaders of Participating Countries!
I would like to express my gratitude to His Excellency Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, for inviting me to participate in this event which contributes to the strengthening and expansion of cooperation between ASEAN and BRICS countries, aimed at bringing about sustainable, inclusive and harmonious development for the world.
Over the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has damaged the socio-economic progress in developing countries achieved under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At present, the region and the world are continuing to face increasingly acute challenges with complicated and unpredictable manner to the development, including geo-political competition, military, trade and technological wars, climate change, monetary policy tightening etc. These factors have been causing changes in the global economic architecture and disrupting the globalization trend, which has significantly reduced the global value chain and productivity.
In the context in which the spread of Covid-19 is subsiding and the efforts to recover the global economy is being prioritized, the BRICS-emerging economies with strong growth potential-have an increasingly crucial and indispensable role in expanding and strengthening the momentum of global economic activities to its potential growth in order to accelerate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.
In this regard, the BRICS-Plus cooperation is an important opportunity to strengthen partnership with other countries so as to establish a platform for promoting practical cooperation in key priority sectors to create job opportunities, reduce poverty, and ensure food and energy security, aimed at achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In this circumstance, we must adhere to the spirit of openness and support for the multilateral trading system as well as strengthen multilateralism, especially promote the openness for international trade and reduce trade barriers, particularly on strategic commodities such as food, medicine, and energy, in order to foster sustainable economic growth and enhance the resilience of regional and global value chains. At the same time, strengthening and expanding cooperation in new socio-economic sectors is also a priority. As such, we should devote special attention on increasing cooperation in areas of capacity development and acceleration of digital transformation and development of the digital economy, which is a new source of growth, especially to help Least-Development Countries to meet the actual needs for the development of the digital economy. In addition, enhancing green economic development is also an indispensable part for nurturing sustainable socio-economic development, through providing supports to the expansion of cooperation on building green infrastructure, promoting energy transition and leveraging green technology etc.
As the chair of ASEAN in 2022, Cambodia will strive to play a more active role to further strengthen ASEAN cooperation with our partners in order to promote post-crisis economic recovery in an inclusive, sustainable and resilient manner towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Thank You!
