Full Text of 2015 Manila Apec Leaders' Declaration

Here's the full text of the 23rd APEC Economic Leaders' Declaration - Building Inclusive Economies, Building a Better World: A Vision for an Asia-Pacific Community:

We, the Leaders of APEC, met in Manila under the theme of 'Building Inclusive Economies, Building a Better World,' determined to take action to fully realize the vision laid down by our predecessors of a stable, integrated, and prosperous community in the Asia-Pacific, in which all our people can enjoy the benefits of economic growth and technological progress. Our enduring commitment will underwrite the peace, stability, development, and common prosperity of the Asia-Pacific.

Under the shadow cast by the terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and against Russian aircraft over the Sinai, and elsewhere, we strongly condemn all acts, methods, and practices of terrorism in all their forms and manifestations. We will not allow terrorism to threaten the fundamental values that underpin our free and open economies. Economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity are among the most powerful tools to address the root causes of terrorism and radicalization. We stress the urgent need for increased international cooperation and solidarity in the fight against terrorism.

We met at a time when global growth is uneven and continues to fall short of expectation. Risks and uncertainties remain in the global economy, including inadequate demand growth, financial volatility, and structural problems weighing on actual and potential growth. While APEC economies have remained resilient, they face challenges in boosting growth prospects.

Weakening external demand growth highlights the importance of promoting domestic demand. The rapidly changing structures and competitiveness of our economies necessitate that we develop new drivers of growth, such as productivity-enhancing structural reform, services and trade in services, investment liberalization and facilitation, infrastructure investment, science, technology and innovation, that lead to more balanced and sustainable outcomes.

We are mindful that despite the unprecedented economic growth that has lifted millions of people out of poverty, it continues to be a reality for millions of others in our region. We call for more intensive efforts for its reduction and eradication. We also acknowledge that inequality acts as a brake on economic growth and that reducing it is essential to spurring development and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.

We recognize the significance of enabling the full participation of all sectors and segments of our society, especially women, youth, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, low-income groups, and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), to achieving inclusive growth. We underscore the importance of empowering them with the ability to contribute to and benefit from future growth.

We remain united and steadfast in supporting an open, predictable, rules-based, and transparent environment for trade and investment that enables meaningful access to economic opportunities. This provides the best means to deliver sustained and inclusive growth, quality job creation, and financial market stability. We reaffirm the commitment to jointly build an open economy in the Asia-Pacific that is based on innovative development, interconnected growth, and shared interests.

We reaffirm the value, centrality, and primacy of the multilateral trading system under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). We are committed to strengthening the rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open, and inclusive multilateral trading system. To further reinforce our commitment on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the WTO, we have decided to issue a separate statement supporting the multilateral trading system and the 10th Ministerial Conference of the WTO.

We reaffirm previous commitments on monetary and exchange rate policies. We will refrain from competitive devaluation and resist all forms of protectionism.

We reiterate our commitment to achieve the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment by 2020 and to the eventual realization of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). We appreciate the work by our officials to ensure that regional trade agreements complement and strengthen the multilateral trading system. We welcome the progress made by many APEC members in completing their respective processes to submit the instruments of acceptance to the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, which will reduce the cost of trading across borders.

While achieving ongoing economic transformation will not be easy, we are confident that we will continue to drive regional and global economic prosperity through quality economic growth.

To this end, we collectively commit:

Building Inclusive Economies

1. To support comprehensive and ambitious structural reforms; achieve positive economic, social, and environmental outcomes; and promote good governance.

   1. We reiterate our commitment to ensure that future growth is strong, balanced, sustainable, inclusive, driven by innovation, and secure against natural disasters and other threats. It should be supportive of gender equality. We remain alert to the risks of the middle income trap.

   2. We adopt the APEC Strategy for Strengthening Quality Growth that will prioritize institution building, social cohesion, and environmental impact to give further focus to our efforts to pursue quality growth, building upon the commitments in the 2010 APEC Growth Strategy, and bearing in mind the commitments in the 2014 APEC Accord on Innovative Development, Economic Reform and Growth. We instruct officials to report, for our review, on APEC's progress in promoting the APEC Strategy for Strengthening Quality Growth.

   3. We welcome the assessment of the 2010 APEC Growth Strategy, especially the finding that more than 300 million people were lifted out of poverty in the APEC region, mainly due to rapid growth in developing economies. We support further efforts in narrowing the development gap in order to end poverty.

   4. We commend the work done under the APEC New Strategy for Structural Reform and welcome the Renewed APEC Agenda for Structural Reform (RAASR). Promoting structural reform is critical to improving economic efficiency and increasing productivity. We recognize that much more remains to be done to ensure that growth is experienced at all levels of our communities. We therefore support economies in their efforts to explore new growth areas, including reforms aimed at further strengthening the services sector by fostering creativity and innovation through an enhanced regulatory environment.

   5. We welcome the progress made on the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) initiative and affirm the EoDB Action Plan (2016-2018) with a new aspirational target of a 10-percent improvement by 2018 in the existing five priority areas on starting a business, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders, getting credit, and enforcing contracts. We welcome the development of an Implementation Plan to guide our efforts to reach this target.

   6. We reaffirm our commitment to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda), which sets a comprehensive, universal, and ambitious framework for global development efforts for the next 15 years, and to ensuring that no one is left behind in our efforts...