At the 43rd Summit of the bloc held in Jakarta last September, Vietnamese Primer Minister Pham Minh Chinh announced that the forum is a contribution to design strategies and visions that will benefit the member countries in the coming years.

The program of the meeting includes, in addition to the plenary sessions, a business meeting on how to optimize development opportunities during the current digital transformation, which will be co-chaired by the Prime Ministers of Laos, Sonexay Siphandone, and Vietnam, and will be attended by experts and companies from Vietnam, the bloc and partner countries.

The meeting will offer the business sector the opportunity to analyze the advantages, difficulties, and opportunities in the current context and build new networks that contribute to rapid, sustainable, and people-centered development, a topic of concern for all members of the bloc.

According to Vietnamese Foreign Minister Hung Viet, this is a necessity that the bloc needs to solve given economic difficulties and non-traditional security challenges, such as climate change, natural disasters, epidemics, and disruptions of supply chains.

To this end, the forum will examine how to harmonize development and environmental protection and the response to climate change, guarantee social security, and place people at the center of all decisions related to the development of each country and the region.

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