by Xia Lin
LIMA, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Participants echoed Chinese President Xi Jinping's call for speeding up the negotiations about a regional overall economic partnership at the APEC CEO Summit on Saturday in Lima, believing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) now under discussion will be a new impetus for global development.
Building an FTAAP, which is aptly regarded by the business community as the APEC dream, is a strategic initiative critical for the long-term prosperity of the Asia-Pacific, Xi told the summit.
"We should firmly pursue the FTAAP as an institutional mechanism for ensuring an open economy in the Asia-Pacific," Xi said.
At 2014 APEC meeting, the Beijing Roadmap was adopted to push forward the FTAAP process. The collective strategic study on this plan is expected to be submitted to the 24th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting on Sunday.
Concrete steps and measures are expected to follow to enhance the development of the Asia-Pacific, and even the whole world, by means of integration and connectivity.
Juan Andres Camus C., president of Bolsa de Comercio de Santiago, the foremost equity market in Chile, believes it is very necessary to build the FTAAP, as the Asia-Pacific needs a unified free trade area to boost economic development and benefit its people.
Once established, the FTAAP, the largest free trade area in the world can unleash much greater economic vigor than other regional trade arrangements and add an estimated 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars of output to the global economy.
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