Your Excellency Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
It is a pleasure for me to participate in this 6th FEALAC Ministerial Meeting. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Government and people of Indonesia for the warm hospitality extended to me and my delegation.
I am confident that the able leadership of our two co-chairs, Indonesia and Colombia, will ensure fruitful outcomes for the future direction of FEALAC. Our deliberations will further strengthen the cooperation between our two highly dynamic and increasingly interconnected regions.
Excellencies,
Amidst current economic uncertainties and multi-faceted global challenges, FEALAC has great potential to become the driving force towards development, cooperation and mutual prosperity. East Asia and Latin America also need to play a more active role in the international arena. Intra-regional cooperation is gaining momentum in our respective regions, namely CELAC (Community of Latin America and Caribbean States) and the establishment of the ASEAN Community in 2015 as well as the expansion of the ACD (Asia Cooperation Dialogue). Moreover, our two regions have built closer linkages with other regions such as Europe through CELAC-EU Summit and Asia-Europe Summit or ASEM. FEALAC has proved itself as a crucial and unique forum in bridging the two regions. However, its potential is still greater than its achievements. We must strengthen the FEALAC process and its institutions. We need to enhance our relevance through more focused projects that produces concrete results. We need to encourage more participation from other regional organizations. In this
regard, Thailand welcomes the recommendation proposed by FEALAC Vision Group to improve efficiency of the forum.
Excellencies,
Over the years, Thailand has actively participated in FEALAC.
We successfully hosted a series of training courses, workshops, and symposiums on issues related to the global challenges. Issues of mutual interests, include poverty reduction, grassroots economy development, tourism and hotel management, drug interdiction and narcotic law enforcement, disaster risk reduction, food security, global warming as well as public health.
One of the upcoming activities is the Third Workshop on Drug Law
Enforcement Cooperation for FEALAC Countries to be held in Bangkok during 29 July — 1 August 2013. The objective is to strengthen the linkage and channel of cooperation as well as to develop the capacity of drug law enforcement officers. In this regard, we look forward to welcoming delegations from FEALAC countries.We hope that by sharing our experiences in tackling this scourge, other nations can also benefit from our acquired knowledge in the fight against drugs.
Thailand pledges to continue creating activities to promote connectivity between the two regions by enhancing the sharing of knowledge and best practices with the FEALAC community. Thailand also stands ready to support and participate in the initiatives and projects of other member countries to assist each other in overcoming the current challenges and striving for a better future of our peoples.
Here, I wish to highlight 5 main areas of cooperation that our two regions can work together to exchange experiences and best practices, namely in providing universal health care, food security, SMEs development, tourism promotion, and academic networking. These areas of cooperation are vital to address the basic needs of the people, improve their well-being and foster their capacity building.
First, Universal Health Coverage: Thailand believes that a healthy population is the bedrock of a country’s sustainable development. Therefore, we have devised a Universal Health Coverage (UHC) scheme aimed at enhancing health and societal equity. So far, UHC or also known as the one U.S. dollar per doctor visit program has been successful in providing inclusive, non-discriminatory and equitable healthcare, particularly for vulnerable groups.
Thailand has therefore been working on sharing our experiences with the international community. We stand ready and look forward to cooperating closely with FEALAC members in sharing best practices and exploring potential technical cooperation activities on the issue of UHC, particularly on public health and healthcare systems.
Secondly, food security is another important issue for us as it directly impacts the well-being of our peoples, from farmers, producers to consumers. Our regions are similar in being major food producers and exporters of the world. We have the capacity to ensure food security, regionally and globally. Perhaps we could explore cooperation in facilitating trade and investment in food products, increasing food production and productivity and enhancing food safety and quality.
We could look into sharing of appropriate technology and know-how, management experiences with regard to logistics relating to food processing and reserve, possibly through trilateral cooperation. We could also consider possible investment opportunities in efficient storehouses and most importantly consider long term solutions to prevent future shock on food supplies.
Thirdly, SMEs development. SMEs are the engine of growth of FEALAC economies. We should cooperate more closely to increase competitiveness and internationalization of our SMEs. Thailand, therefore, welcomes the Feasibility Study for the Establishment of a Bi-Regional Center for the Development of SMEs proposed by Ecuador. We believe that the Center will contribute to the development of capability upgrading and the promotion of SME networking between our two regions.
Fourthly, tourism promotion: We need to enhance connectivity between us. Tourism helps promote people-to-people contact and better understanding among our peoples. This in turn would facilitate closer cooperation in other potential areas. Thailand stands ready to work with other member countries to facilitate easier movement of persons, to exchange tourist information and best practices, networking among tour operators, and to promote sustainable tourism.
Lastly, academic networking: Thailand fully supports the establishment of the FEALAC University Network proposed by Brazil. Academic networking will not only contribute to enhancing knowledge and experience sharing but also bringing our youths closer together. There are several Thai universities which already have linkages with universities in Latin America. At this stage, there are over 20 Thai universities interested in joining the network.
We should put more efforts in raising public awareness and reaching out to all sectors of the society such as the youth, business community, academic, press and the general public. This way, we will not only make FEALAC truly the forum for all, but will also maximize our strength and capacity to address future global challenges by pooling from all the resources available within all sectors of our community.
Excellencies,
Thailand has offered to serve as the next Regional Coordinator for East Asia. We will host the 15th FEALAC Senior Officials Meeting as well as sideline events such as business roundtable and academic seminar in order to complement FEALAC activities next year.
It is our strong belief that, being the only forum bridging Latin America and Asia, FEALAC has great potential to effectively address future global challenges so as to bring about peace, stability and prosperity for our regions and peoples. It is in this spirit that Thailand is seeking election to a non-permanent seat of the UN Security Council for the term 2017-2018 to serve the global community on peace and security issues. We count on your valuable support.
Thank you.
For further information, please contact the Press Division, Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tel.02-6435170, Fax.02-6435169, E-mail: div0704@mfa.go.th