Full text of the Da Nang Declaration: Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future

II. Creating New Drivers for Regional Economic Integration

Advancing Free and Open Trade and Investment

14. We commit to attaining the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment in the Asia Pacific region. We agree to accelerate efforts to address WTO-inconsistent barriers to trade and investment and take concrete actions towards the achievement of the Bogor Goals by 2020. We also note the importance of non-discriminatory, reciprocal and mutually advantageous trade and investment frameworks. We will work together to make trade more inclusive, support improved market access opportunities, and address unfair trade practices. We urgently call for the removal of market-distorting subsidies and other types of support by governments and related entities.

15. We are committed to carrying out further actions to promote an enabling and conducive environment for investment in the Asia-Pacific region.

16. We will work together to realize the potential of the internet and digital economy, including through appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks, and taking into account fair competition to encourage investment and innovation. We welcome the adoption of the APEC Internet and Digital Economy Roadmap and the APEC Framework on Cross-border Ecommerce Facilitation. We will consider actions to facilitate the development of the internet and digital economy, including e-commerce and digital trade.

17. We are committed to further actions to increase APEC's competitiveness in the services sector by 2025 and intensifying our efforts to address barriers that inhibit our businesses from competing or trading in services markets.

Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP)

18. We reaffirm our commitment to advance in a comprehensive and systematic manner the process toward the eventual realization of an FTAAP to further APEC’s regional economic integration agenda. We commend the efforts of economies to advance work related to the eventual realization of an FTAAP, including capacity building initiatives and information sharing mechanism. We encourage economies to make further progress and to develop work programs to enhance APEC economies’ ability to participate in high quality, comprehensive free trade agreement negotiations in the future.

Multilateral Trading System

19. We welcome the entry into force of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and call for its full implementation, recognizing that it helps bring about meaningful and widespread benefits for all economies and businesses. We commit to work with other members of the WTO towards a successful 11th WTO Ministerial Conference.

20. We underline APEC’s crucial role in support of a rules-based, free, open, fair, transparent, and inclusive multilateral trading system. We commit to work together to improve the functioning of the WTO, including its negotiating, monitoring, and dispute settlement functions, to adequately address challenges facing the system, bringing benefits to all of our people and businesses. We will work to ensure the effective and timely enforcement of the WTO rules.

21. We note the importance of bilateral, regional and plurilateral agreements, and commit to working to ensure they complement the multilateral trade agreements.

22. We will strive for a climate conducive to investment and job creation. We will work to ensure a level playing field through continuing APEC’s leadership in pursuing open markets. We recall our pledge to extend our standstill commitment until the end of 2020 and recommit to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices, recognizing the role of legitimate trade defence instruments.

Fostering Regional and Sub-regional Comprehensive and Inclusive Connectivity

23. We reaffirm our commitment to build a seamless and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia-Pacific by 2025. In this regard, we welcome economies’ efforts in promoting cooperation to advance policy collaboration, trade facilitation, connectivity, financing, and people-to-people exchanges. We reiterate the importance of quality infrastructure for sustainable economic growth and pledge to promote infrastructure in terms of both quantity and quality through adequate investment and strengthened public-private partnership. We encourage further collaboration and synergy among various connectivity initiatives and work on advancing economic development and integration of sub-regional, rural and remote areas in the region, including efforts to develop safe, secure, resilient, efficient, affordable and sustainable transportation systems.

24. We underline the need to develop policies that take full advantage of global value chains. We encourage further actions to enable better participation, greater value added and upward mobility of developing economies and MSMEs in GVCs. We appreciate initiatives such as Asia-Pacific Model E-port Network and APEC Green Supply Chain Network and their positive contribution to supply chain connectivity.

25. We commit to promote sustainable tourism, and explore its potential for development in remote areas as an important part of APEC economic growth strategies and enhanced people-to-people connectivity. We are determined to reach the target of 800 million APEC tourist arrivals by 2025.

26. We express concern over the growing threat of terrorism in the APEC region, which stems rom ISIL, Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, and is exacerbated by the cross-border travel of foreign terrorist fighters and emerging sources and channels of terrorist financing. APEC economies commit to continually and effectively respond to the terrorist challenges in the region and their economic impact, as guided by APEC’s strategy to secure supply chains, travel, finance, and infrastructure.

27. As the Asia-Pacific is highly exposed to natural disasters, we commit to strengthen cooperation, including with the private sector, to enhance resilience to disasters through effective mitigation, preparedness, disaster risk reduction, response and recovery efforts. This includes advancement in policy, innovation, science and technology, business continuity planning, early warning systems, and search and rescue. We underline the importance of financial instruments and policies against disaster risks.