International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz said today that Malaysia has benefited from various initiatives of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Forum, which is seen as a capacity building and educative building block that supports and contributes towards skills development, business entrepreneurship and more effective participation in global trade.

A Bernama repport quoted the minister as saying in Pucon, Chile that Apec is important to Malaysia and the grouping, which began in 1989, had made substantive progress on a broad front over the years.

Rafidah is in the lakeside resort town of Pucon for the two-day meeting of Apec ministers responsible for trade.

Apec, she said, had provided Malaysia with an excellent forum to articulate its views on regional and global issues and influence public opinion as well as share experiences and learn from the best practices and expertise of other member economies.

Rafidah said Apec had also helped Malaysia to focus on economic co-operation, trade facilitation and issues on reducing the cost of doing business.

Active engagement

Tracing back to the time when Kuala Lumpur hosted the Apec Leaders' Meeting in 1998, she said Malaysia brought up the issue of capacity building and skills development to the forefront of the Apec agenda then and to date had continued its active engagement in Apec capacity building work.

For instance, she said Malaysia had committed towards organising and hosting eight training and capacity building activities this year in deposit insurance, financial disclosure, competition policy, productivity-based compensation, market supervision, enforcement of corporate governance, benefits of harmonising regulations and life sciences innovation.

Rafidah said that as a consultative forum with diverse membership of 21 member economies, Apec was well-positioned to assist developing economies prepare and equip themselves with the necessary skills and knowledge to participate effectively in the multilateral trading system.

The minister added that Malaysia's interest in hosting these programmes was to encourage a broader spectrum of domestic participation not only from government agencies but also the business sector, industry and academia to ensure the widest possible dissemination of capacity building knowledge