APEC Summit Peru 2024

The 2024 APEC Leaders’ and CEO Summit is building on many of the themes of the 2023 cycle with its emphasis on issues of inclusion and sustainability. For Peru, the host economy of this year’s APEC Summit, it will be overseeing the APEC cycle under the motto, “Empower, Include, Grow”. Peru’s focus is on the social dimension of growth and development that empowers the most vulnerable, harnesses digital opportunities, and gives impetus to economic growth. 

Peru regards the state of the world as characterised by high levels of income inequality, a loss of jobs and increased precarity and insecurity in employment. These conditions are the result of the challenges created through the increasing effects of climate change, disruptions in global supply chains and an emerging digital economy. Addressing these challenges are important to ensuring that trust in the effectiveness of economic and social institutions are not undermined.

Bearing these conditions in mind, Peru is aiming to foster inclusive growth through its three major priorities:

• Trade and investment for inclusive and interconnected growth
• Innovation and digitalisation to promote transition to the formal and global economy
• Sustainable growth for resilient development

The Summit will be Peru’s third time as APEC host after it previously held the role in 2008 and 2016. As the host economy, Peru will be organising over 160 meetings over five cities – Arequipa, Cusco, Trujillo, Pucallpa and Lima – during its cycle. These meetings will include nine ministerial meetings, five meetings of Senior Officials (SOM), meetings of the Business Advisory Council (ABAC) of APEC, and the Leaders’ Summit. Other APEC events include meetings for committees and subcommittees, experts and working groups, national and international seminars, symposiums, and workshops for institutional capacity building.

Peru regards APEC as a key platform to showcase itself as a location for investment, promote the internationalisation of Peruvian businesses, and incorporate its sectors into global value chains. Peru is also emphasising “APEC for the People” by bringing the forum closer to the citizens by incorporating the needs of the population into the agenda, activities, and topics of the APEC process. 

The Peru Agenda

Peru’s key priorities seek to empower people, particularly women, the youth, SMEs and informal enterprise, all of whom occupy more vulnerable positions in society. Their empowerment through APEC is envisioned as giving them the tools to participate in the benefits of the global economy and direct it towards their economic and social inclusion.

Trade and investment for inclusive and interconnected growth: This priority focuses on strengthening open, free, and inclusive trade, with the aim of encouraging economic growth that encompasses various sectors of society, and promotes interconnectedness and inclusion, thereby ensuring long-term sustainability. Additionally, APEC aims to balance economic objectives with environmental considerations.

• Trade liberalization: In line with the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040, Peru aims to develop a renewed vision for the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). 
• Trade facilitation: APEC aims to strengthen the supply chains in the region through adopting effective standards and promoting investment.
• Trade inclusion: APEC is promoting increased access for start-ups, Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) to global markets and value chains.

Innovation and digitalization to promote transition to the formal and global economy: this priority seeks to empower the most vulnerable economic actors. Here Peru recognizes that a large portion of the population relies on the informal economy to support their livelihoods. Innovation and digitalization has been will be leveraged to develop pathways to transition to formality, which would create access for workers and small businesses to benefits, such as regular financial sources, public services, and skill-building initiatives. This priority will be operationalized in three areas:

• Policy frameworks and strategies toward formal transition: APEC aims to support exchanges of policies, practices and incentives, and policy-building initiatives that support the formalization of employment and entrepreneurship. 
• Underscoring the social dimension of economic growth: Peru aims to attach particular importance to the role of the social economy in improving competitiveness.
• Bridging gaps and highlighting inclusion: this area will pay special attention to inclusive digital transformation, financial inclusion, particularly as it relates to women in the economy, and the informal economy in the tourism sector.

Sustainable growth for resilient development, which seeks to promote energy transition: this priority recognizes that sustainability will be necessary to ensure economic growth in the long term. Building on previous outcomes, the emphasizes under this priority are decarbonization and the energy transition, sustainable finance, and food security.

• The energy transition: Peru will look to collectively work on policy guidances to develop and implement low-carbon hydrogen policy frameworks in the Asia-Pacific region.
• Food security: APEC’s agenda focuses on reducing food loss and waste as key mechanisms to manage the region’s food requirements. 
• Sustainable finance: APEC will promote sustainable finance in the areas of sustainable finance initiatives, sustainable infrastructure, carbon leakage measures, the clean energy transition, and hydrometeorological risk financing.

Key events on the 2024 APEC calendar include:

• Finance and Central Bank Deputies’ Meeting
• High-Level Policy Dialogue on Women and the Economy
• Joint Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Trade and Ministers for Women
• Ministers Responsible for Trade
• Tourism Ministerial Meeting and Related Meetings
• Food Security Ministerial Meeting and Related Meetings
• Energy Ministerial Meeting
• High-Level Meeting on Health and the Economy
• Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meeting
• APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting