The Fourth Business Forum of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (hereinafter referred to as CICA) and Founding Assembly of CICA Business Council (hereinafter referred to as CICA-BC) were held in Beijing on 24-25 November 2015. H.E. Mr. YANG Jiechi, State Councilor of the State Council, P.R. China sent a congratulatory message to the Assembly. China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME) hosted the forum. It was attended by more than 230 representatives from government, financial institutions, business enterprises and diplomats from CICA Member States.
The Board of the CICA Business Council met before the Plenary Session and approved the agenda.
H.E. Mr. TONG Daochi, Assistant Minister of Commerce, People’s Republic of China, Ambassador GONG Jianwei, Executive Director, CICA Secretariat and Ms. JIANG Yan, Deputy Director General of the Department of European-Central Asian Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended the events.
Outcome Document adopted on this occasion is produced below:
1. The Fourth CICA Business Forum
1.1 The theme of the Fourth CICA Business Forum was “Building Mutual Confidence for Common Prosperity and Creating a New Model in CICA Trade and Economic Cooperation”. The Fourth CICA Business Forum focused on promoting infrastructure interconnectivity, finance and investment as well as SMEs cooperation among Member States. The delegates from participating Member States delivered speeches and held discussions on afore-mentioned topics. The delegates unanimously agreed that the CICA region was an important part of global economic system and given the current international economic situation, all Member States were faced with the common challenges and tasks of transforming the economic development model, optimizing the trade structure and seek new economic impetus. To this end, the representative bodies/delegates of each Member State shared strong willingness to cooperate with each other.
1.2 The participants agreed that the Member States were considerably diverse in terms of their economic condition, development model and the level of development. The enabling factors for development were unevenly distributed among Member States. While some states relied heavily on the export of finished products to meet the developed economies’ demand, others were dependent on export of energy and raw materials. Some States had surplus production capacity to their advantage. The foreign reserves and high savings of some states had not yet benefited their national economies or being invested in other Member States. Some other States were still in the initial stages of industrialization and had relatively poor infrastructure facilities.
1.3 The participants agreed that this situation needed to be corrected. In fact, such a situation lent itself to correction whereby Member States could interact and cooperate to find each other’s comparative advantage to accelerate mutual, multilateral, and regional economic development. The CICA Business Council provides an excellent platform for such interaction.
1.4 Ms. Zholdybayeva Galia, Director of the Department of Enterprise Development of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan mentioned that it would consider hosting the Fifth Business Forum in 2016.
2. Founding of CICA Business Council
2.1 Founding Assembly of CICA Business Council officially launched the CICA Business Council and its working plan outlined in CICA Business Council Regulations, which indicated the resolution at the Fourth CICA Summit Meeting in Shanghai 2014 of forming CICA Business Council had come into reality.
2.2 The CICA Business Council is composed of representatives from business organizations and officials from relevant state bodies of Member States. It shall focus on promoting cooperation among regional SMEs, trade facilitation, financial and investment cooperation, infrastructure interconnectivity. It shall also carry out various trade promotion activities to expand collaboration among Member States in the fields of government sectors, industry organizations, financial institutions, research institutes, and mass media. CICA Business Council aims to promote multilateral economic and trade cooperation, enhance trade and investment facilitation as well as build up cooperation platform for enterprises.
2.3 The Founding Assembly approved the establishment of the Board of CICA Business Council, which is the permanent executive body of CICA-BC. The Chairman of CICA-BC will work to strengthen the contact between CICA Business Council and Business organizations of each Member State, CICA Senior Officials Committee (SOC), as well as Embassies of Member States in his tenure. During China’s Chairmanship, CICA Business Council Chairman Office shall be in China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME), which will help the Chairmanship to reinforce information exchange, document drafting, events organization and website maintenance.
2.4 Mr. Zhang Yujing, President of China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME), was nominated as Chairman of CICA Business Council. Ms. Zholdybayeva Galia, Director of the Department of Enterprise Development of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan; Ms. N. A. Minaeva, Deputy Head of Regulations and International Cooperation Division in SME sphere, SME and Competition Development Department, Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation; Mr. Salih Tuna SAHIN, Vice President, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization of the Republic of Turkey; and Mr. Supant Mongolsuthree, Chairman, The Federation of Thai Industries were nominated as Deputy Chairmen of CICA Business Council.
2.5 CICA Business Council called on those Member States who had not submitted the names of their nominees to do so at the earliest possible.
CICA Member States agreed to work in accordance to the following CICA Business Council Working Plan
3. CICA Business Council Working Plan
In order to promote the CICA regional economic cooperation, realize the joint regional economic development and facilitate the exchange and distribution of goods, capital, personnel and technology, CICA Business Council shall work on the following aspects.
3.1 Based on different needs of Member States in infrastructure, investment, industrialization and industrial complementarities, CICA-BC shall organize CICA economy, trade, investment and cooperation promotion delegation to Member States for identifying their particular needs and requirements.
3.2 Establish Working Committees on finance and investment; SMEs cooperation; and infrastructure. The Committees will have representatives from CICA Business Council, government, financial institutes and leading enterprises from the Chairmanship State, Coordinating and Co-coordinating States. The Committees would be responsible for giving suggestions and proposing seminars and event organization.
3.3 CICA-BC shall also conduct studies on the regional cooperation recommendations by Member States, such as the “Belt & Road Initiative” and international production capacity cooperation proposed by China.
3.4 Considering the presence of Special Economic Zones, Industrial Parks and Free Trade Zones in Member States, CICA-BC shall discuss cooperation with commercial finance associations so as to promote mutual investment among Member States’ enterprises.
3.5 CICA-BC shall make a list of all the CICA regional exhibitions and forums with a view to holding international business events of top level in CICA Member States.
3.6 CICA-BC shall reinforce the contact among CICA Secretariat, Senior Officials Committee and Youth Council, and participate in their events related to economic and trade cooperation. CICA-BC shall also hold an economic and trade event during the CICA Summit and Ministerial Meeting based on the situation.
3.7 CICA-BC shall strengthen the cooperation with other international organizations.
3.8 CICA-BC shall make full use of its website and circulations to publicize the Business Council and real-time project information so as to promote exchange among Member States.
Some of the Member States made suggestions for future activities of CICA-BC, which will be duly considered by the Board of the Business Council. These suggestions are annexed to the outcome document.
Attachments:
1. Agenda of the 4th CICA Business Forum & Founding Assembly of CICA Business Council
2. List of Participants of the 4th CICA Business Forum & Founding Assembly of CICA Business Council