Pamintuan briefs mediamen on progress of works at the city’s Heritage District.
PHOTO BY BONG LACSON
ANGELES CITY- This city will host senior ministersrepresenting 21 member nations in next year’s Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit to be hosted by the Philippines, as Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan cited ongoing projects that include the P100-million lighting of roads through tourism areas extending from Clark
Freeport to the so-called Heritage District downtown.
“We were told that Angeles, including Clark, will be hosting senior ministers for a limited period, but intermittently for the entire 2015,” Pamintuan told media in a press conference. The Philippines last hosted APEC in 1996.
Pamintuan said work is already afoot to complete the Heritage District, including the removal of spaghetti wires tangled between posts. “About 70 percent of such wires have already been removed, Except for one, all other communications firms have already complied to remove the ugly wires which are mostly dead anyway,” he noted.
Already the French government has sent teams to also help upgrade the local museum in the Heritage District in the area of the Holy Rosary parish church, he said. The district also includes the historic Pamintuan mansion where Emilio Aguinaldo held the first anniversary celebration of Phiippine Independence, amid plans to cover a creek with concrete slabs so that a garden-promenade could be built over them.
As part of the preparations for APEC, the Department of Foreign Affairs Office of the Undersecretary for International Economic Relations, in partnership with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Technical Assistance Training Facility and the United States Agency for International Development, has already held a workshop entitled, “APEC Capacity Building Workshop:
Supporting the Philippines 2015 Host Year” to build awareness on the APEC process. Representatives from former APEC host economies, such as Peru (2008), the United States (2011) and Indonesia (2012), also shared their experiences in organizing APEC events. APEC is an intergovernmental grouping currently composed of 21 member economies.
Commitments made within APEC are non-binding and voluntary. APEC focuses on three key areas, namely, trade and investment liberalization, business facilitation and economic and technical cooperation.
