00:00In our one year in ASEAN, how would you, what's the initiative?
00:05If I may, I say number one, very importantly, we must get everyone together to agree on the broader 2045 vision.
00:14Number two, if we have the political will and our colleagues in other countries have the political will,
00:22we should strengthen the secretariat.
00:25You have pointed out exactly the main problem of ASEAN.
00:29Every year come by and go, and in the form of rotating chair, very little can be achieved for the longer time.
00:39So it's important that I think we need to strengthen ASEAN secretariat,
00:42where we have a clear vision, strengthen ASEAN chair,
00:45and increasingly I hope, personally what I do is that I try to rope in the Filipinos with us in some of our activities.
00:53I hope my government will practice it across the board, because the Filipinos will be the next chair.
01:00So if we can gradually evolve a troika, that means this current chair, next chair, the following chair,
01:09they can work together a bit like the EU, it will help a lot more.
01:14Pavel, you, listening to you, I was just marveling over, you know,
01:19the remarkable similarities between ASEAN's journey and ANN's journey,
01:24especially when you talked about the secretariat and the problem of finding enough resources for it.
01:31But having said that, I want to ask you, ANN's mission is bringing people closer, bringing Asia closer,
01:39and I want to ask you, as you assume the chairmanship,
01:43can we expect some new initiatives to bring people closer, or some thinking on those lines?
01:50We are thinking whether we can bring together, we were only thinking about ASEAN,
01:56but maybe we can expand this to Asian editors,
02:00but thinking to bring together economic or business editors from ASEAN, from around ASEAN,
02:08to come to Kuala Lumpur in January, to think about what would be the future economic narrative,
02:15and also future ideas of how we should move forward as an organisation, ASEAN,
02:23and maybe also moving beyond.
02:26Because I think in our respective reporting, in our daily reporting work,
02:34we are focusing on our national economy.
02:37So we describe to the public our national economy.
02:43But we have not done enough, I think, and maybe this time we have done a lot,
02:47but I think in general we have not done enough in explaining economy to the wider audience,
02:56and explaining interconnectedness between your country and my country,
03:01between the supply chain, the onion from India to Malaysia.
03:06We have not brought our people to understand this interconnectedness.
03:11So I hope actually, if we can pull this off, we are hoping to do it in January,
03:18to bring the business and economic editors to come together,
03:24to think about how to explain our economic relationship moving forward.
03:31Just let me bring one more point.
03:34This always troubles me that my ministry, the daily language that we use is investment and trade,
03:42because it is in the name.
03:45But I always think that country and country's relationship cannot be just about trade and investment,
03:52because trade and investment sometimes sounds very transactional.
03:56So I am trying to promote the use of the word economic cooperation.
04:01That means I don't have to be winning over you just on every count.
04:08I can cooperate with you, we can grow together,
04:11and I think we can build a lot more global economic cooperation,
04:16so that we grow together and we enrich each other's economy.
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