By Elishya Perera
SINGAPORE (CWBN)_ Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, on today (Nov 12), that Singapore will contribute US$100,000 to Covid-19 ASEAN Response Fund, which will assist member states in procuring medical supplies and equipment to combat the pandemic.
Speaking at the ASEAN Summit, which is being held via video conference, Prime Minister Lee said that the region has to ensure an equitable, steady and affordable supply of Covid-19 vaccines for its people once these are available, and called for “vaccine multilateralism”.
“Many leading vaccine candidates are being developed by our external partners, as well as our ASEAN member states too… We should work with them to facilitate the production and distribution of vaccines to meet the needs of our region,” Lee noted.
On the economic sphere, PM Lee stated that leaders of the member states should increase efforts to enhance ASEAN’s competitiveness in the post-Covid-19 world. The Prime Minister called the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) later in the week a “major achievement”.
“The RCEP affirms ASEAN’s collective commitment to economic integration and to an inclusive, open and rules-based multilateral trading system,” he said.
The RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the ten member states of ASEAN, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, and five of their FTA partners—Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. India was also party to the agreement, until the nation pulled out of the deal last year.
On the other hand, PM Lee also addressed the great power rivalry in South-east Asia, with tensions between the United States and China “putting the region under greater stress and testing ASEAN centrality and unity”.
However, “Our regional architecture is open and inclusive by design, with ASEAN at its centre,” the Prime Minister added. “We must retain our value proposition of offering a neutral platform for countries to work together on regional and global challenges such as counter-terrorism, cyber security and transboundary haze pollution”.
Edited By Chathushka Perera
