The GMS leaders have shared their commitment to overcome all challenges in this decade, including the COVID-19 pandemic, said Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, in his closing remarks of the 7th Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Summit on Sept. 9.
“In our Seventh Summit today, we endorsed and adopted a new Strategic Framework, the third for the GMS Programme. Again, we should be confident that this will guide us in coping with and overcoming a new set of complex and urgent challenges in this decade,” said Samdech Techo Hun Sen, also Chair of the 7th GMS Summit.
“We are certainly starting this new decade under a difficult crisis arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, with its serious and prolonged impacts on public health and the economy. Although there are now glimmers of hope, with the advent of the vaccines, the general expectation is that massive efforts are still needed to significantly control the disease and to bring back sustained growth to our economies,” he underlined.
Moreover, Samdech Techo Hun Sen continued, as GMS-2030 has rightly underscored, there are other longer term and broader trends that are now approaching critical stages and threatening the entire world. The region is now being warned about the “climate emergency”, and we are already feeling the very real effects of worsening natural disasters. The region is also seeing the continuing threats to global economic growth and emergence of unilaterally restrictive and protective trade policies.
“However, we in the GMS have shown time and again our resilience and our ability to take practical and results-focused actions to address common concerns. Now, more than ever, we must realise the crucial importance of cooperation and collaborative actions. The threats and challenges that we face have impacts that straddle and spill over borders and, therefore, need joint actions. I believe that our joint efforts have a significant value over and above the sum of our individual national efforts in addressing common problems,” the Cambodian Premier said.
Samdech Techo Hun Sen also urged all GMS members to commit to further strengthen the cooperation and to resolutely pursue the strategies and priority actions charted in the two documents endorsed today.
“I firmly believe these strategies are well developed based on thorough assessment in regional and global contexts and adhered to basic knowledge,” he stressed. “However, as we all know, success would depend on effective implementation. We must, therefore, put effort into monitoring progress, constantly assessing the rapidly changing landscape in which we operate and remain flexible in addressing emerging issues.”