Resources

The 2016 APEC Business Ethics for SMEs Forum will be APEC's first capacity-building program to strengthen ethical practices hosted within a Latin American member economy. The two-day Forum will take place in Lima before the APEC SME Ministerial and focus on heightened trans-pacific collaboration on ethics, bringing together SMEs operating within and between Asian and Latin American economies to: showcase best practices and lessons learned, identify cultural nuances, address emerging challenges, and advance the implementation of harmonized codes of ethics across the entire Asia-Pacific region to support SME cross-border trade. This project directly aligns with several rank one funding criteria by: promoting SME development, supporting the multilateral trading system, fostering trade facilitation, and supporting the ease of doing business work stream. The project builds on the successful multi-year project, Business Ethics for APEC SMEs, which enjoys strong support from all 21 APEC economies and endorsement by APEC Leaders and Ministers.

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APEC Leaders have long acknowledged the importance of including women as equal partners and beneficiaries of economic growth and prosperity, including as entrepreneurs. In 2014, APEC ministers committed to the development of an Asia-Pacific regional women's entrepreneurship network to help women in all 21 APEC economies expand their opportunities to participate in regional trade and economic growth. The Women's Entrepreneurship in APEC initiative (WE-APEC) represents a shared vision to support women's entrepreneurship, empower governments to better support these entrepreneurs, and provide an opportunity to share ideas, tools, and best practices so that women can establish and grow their businesses.

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The digital economy enables MSMEs to enter new markets and foster more inclusive and sustainable economic growth as the proliferation of business transactions that depend on the internet and information and communication technology (ICTs) further establishes the importance of the digital economy as the driver of innovation, competitiveness, and growth for the developing world in the Asia-Pacific. This project seeks to increase the knowledge of APEC economies in (i) facilitating and utilizing the flow of information and (ii) fostering digital literacy to enable MSME access to the digital economy. 

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The Business Ethics for APEC SMEs Initiative is the world's largest public-private partnership to strengthen ethical business practices in target sectors, training 1,350+ stakeholders and expanding high-standards to 18,000+ companies (13,000+ SMEs). It also designs and implements model consensus agreements to strengthen ethical business practices across health systems. In 2016, these results were recognized by APEC Leaders, APEC Ministers, APEC SME Ministers, and APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade. The 2018 APEC Business Ethics for SMEs Forum held in Tokyo, Japan will expand this success as the first program to leverage the latest technologies for rapid scale-up in code of ethics implementation for SMEs. With most industry associations across APEC economies having implemented a code aligned with APEC Principles, achieving the Nanjing Declaration's 2020 commitments at the enterprise-level requires a "train-the-trainer" meeting of principals to build capacity on utilization of these technologies within their home economy. This project aligns with several rank one funding criteria by strengthening MSME innovation capacities and competitiveness, supporting the multilateral trading system, fostering trade facilitation, advancing human development, and supporting the ease of doing business work stream.

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The project will fund a two-day ethics compliance workshop in Hanoi, Viet Nam in August 2018. At this workshop, a newly formed Construction-Engineering Implementation Team, comprised of experienced engineers and construction compliance experts from APEC economies, will formulate a set of recommendations to increase SME participation in infrastructure projects across the APEC region. The Implementation Team will: 1) identify relevant APEC Working Groups to expand expertise and the knowledge base on issues such as customs, procurement and human resource management , 2) review and select high-standard training models to educate future generations of civil service professionals, 3) define a common set of APEC-wide Principles and Guidelines for an Anti-Corruption Certification program with potential incentive mechanisms for SMEs, and improve government processes - such as greater automation of regulatory practices to enhance efficiency, transparency and opportunities for small construction & engineering firms  who are the primary bidders, major suppliers and sub-contractors on large and small-scale projects across the APEC region.

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The 3rd SME Business Ethics Forum was held in Lima, Peru on September 5-6 for three sectors: medical devices, biopharmaceutical, and construction-engineering.

The elaboration of a Consensus Framework for Multi-Stakeholder Ethical Collaboration in the biopharmaceutical and medical device sectors, brought together relevant actors in healthcare system under a common platform. The Framework was endorsed under the APEC Nanjing Declaration.

The 3rd SME Business Ethics Forum was held in Lima, Peru on September 5-6 for three sectors: medical devices, biopharmaceutical, and construction-engineering.

The 4th APEC Business Ethics for SMEs Forum to be held in Hanoi, Viet Nam on 7-8 September 2017. The goals of the forum include: (i) specialized capacity building mentoring to ensure all economies have relevant industry codes in place by 2020, (ii) increase the number of member economies with public-private framework agreements to facilitate high-standard ethical business practices across national health systems, and (iii) strengthen ethical business practices for distributors and other third party intermediaries as vital enterprises in the medical device and biopharmaceutical sectors.