Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the dinner hosted by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting Chairman

[Held at the Philippine International Convention Center, November 24, 1996]

A vision of community

APEC is a moving constellation of meetings rotating around the capitals of its member-countries. Not until after a full generation will it return to us in the Philippines.

As a good but anxious host let me express the hope that this country’s first attempt at hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting will prove not altogether displeasing to our honored guests—the leaders themselves, together with their ministers; the members of the APEC Business Advisory Council; the participants in the APEC Business Forum; and the ladies.

And let me welcome especially those economic leaders attending the Leaders’ Meeting for the first time; and those old friends returning to us with renewed mandates from their national constituencies.

We have long been preparing for this event

Some of my domestic critics say the Philippine Government has taken a year too long to prepare for this event.

That is not accurate. We have been preparing for this event for almost five years, or since I first took office in middle 1992, when we began working to restore the national economy to the path of growth.

Over those years, the Philippine economy has come up from close to zero growth to the healthy 7 percent—with 7.5 percent rate as our estimate for this year—which for the first time puts us well within the ballpark of the East Asian APEC economies. In APEC-speak, we have been able to do this through reforms and policies such as that of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.

Hope for APEC’s future

We in the Philippines have always attached the greatest importance to what APEC signifies, not only in what this forum has succeeded in gathering under one roof, but in the hope it creates for the future of the Asia-Pacific region.

Four years ago—when we first gathered at Blake Island with President Clinton as our gracious host—we laid the vision of an Asia-Pacific community.

In the two succeeding summits—at Bogor and Osaka— we have carried on the work of translating that shared vision into reality.

And now here in Manila, our economies will present individually—and work out collectively—action plans for giving flesh and blood to our abstract vision of an Asia-Pacific community.

We are just beginning our discussions as leaders. But I am sure you share my confidence that our meeting in Manila will be fruitful indeed.

And thinking now of the impatient and hopeful peoples we represent, I know we will take the decisions that will fortify their inner desire for greater community—for forging peace and prosperity within this region we inhabit together.

It is perhaps not irrelevant to recall tonight that signal moment—475 years ago—when Ferdinand Magellan crossed the Pacific Ocean from the Americas and, after a long and hazardous voyage, touched land in the Philippines.

Magellan’s epochal landfall brought the shores of the Pacific together—and completed the map of the modem world.

I shall not venture even to compare our own APEC enterprise with that landmark voyage which changed humankind’s entire concept of the world.

But surely we together can say that, through APEC:

  • We are seeding great changes in our region;
  • We are helping to build a better world;
  • We are raising the quality of life for our peoples; and
  • We too are beginning to make a difference in the way humankind will regard the future world.