Union Minister for Planning, Finance and Industry U Soe Win joined the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Finance Ministers’ Meeting virtually hosted by Bangladesh from his office in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.
During the meeting, Finance Minister of Bangladesh Mr AHM Mustafa Kamal made an opening speech and then the video message of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was played.
Vice President for World Bank Mr Hartwig Schafer, Vice President for Asia Development Bank Mr Shixin Chen and Deputy Director for International Monetary Fund Ms Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf respectively made a keynote speech.
Then, Union Minister U Soe Win said the countries all over the world are currently facing the serious impacts of COVID-19, and it needs to do preventive measures widely to overcome the pandemic. So, “Addressing COVID-19: Ensuring a Strong, Sustainable, Inclusive and Balanced Recovery”, a theme of the meeting, is appropriate to conduct such prevention, control and treatment of COVID-19 activities.
Myanmar’s socio-economic situation is severely affected during the second of COVID-19, and so the government drafted COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan (CERP) in April and then implemented the critical procedures, including financial aids.
The Union Minister also discussed loans with low-interest rates and financial assistance received from World Bank, IMF, ADB and JICA to finance the government’s COVID-19 response and Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) of G20 countries, further cooperation with IMF and other partner countries to provide the needed finance for the recovery of economic, especially in the developing countries.
The ASEM Finance Ministers’ Meeting is a forum for cooperation on development issues between Asia and Europe, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the world and is organized with 54 partners from across Europe and Asia.
It has been held since 1997 in ASEM member countries once every two years and mainly focuses on economy and financial status of the member countries.
The Finance Ministers issued a Press Release that they will cooperate with the partner organizations to set up an effective response for the health, social and economic impacts of COIVD-19.
Deputy Ministers U Maung Maung Win, U Sett Aung and Dr Min Ye Paing Hein, Permanent Secretary U Tun Tun Naing and other officials joined the meeting together with the Union Minister.—MNA
(Translated by Khine Thazin Han )
