'New economy' leaders to meet in Manila

Leaders of the networked economy will gather in Manila in July 2000 to discuss important issues which will govern e-commerce and other aspects of this emerging global order centered on the Internet.

This was announced yesterday by Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II, president of Ayala Corp. and Philippine commissioner of Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC). The GIIC is a global organization addressing the information revolution as it impacts societies, nations and individuals within the global networked economy.

The GIIC espouses a diverse multi-industry perspective with its leadership drawn from private-sector CEOs, public officials from developed and developing nations, academic and research institutions. It has five year's experience in designing effective programs and policies on emerging technical and regulatory issues within the New-Economy and has served as a consultant to the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, among other institutions.

Zobel said the July meeting, intends to create a regional focus for GIIC in Asia., It aims to create a network of business leaders in Asia who can extend the reach of the GIIC while allowing a broader consensus on issues related to the growth of the new Internet-centered economy. Among those attending the July convention are W. Bownan Cutter, managing director of E.M. Warburg Pincus and Co. LLC and Michio Naruto, vice chairman of Fujitsu Ltd. Other companies to be represented in the meeting are Cisco Systems, Mitsubishi Corp., Citicorp, Siemens, Nokia, Toyota and NEC.

According to Zobel, the GICC has likened the onset of the information age to a tsunami "with the power and force to dislocate communities and individuals unless they are prepared for it," GIIC's mission is to foster private sector leadership with the cooperation of the public sector to fully develop information networks and services for the advancement of global economic growth, education, and quality of life.

GIIC is an inclusive organization that is going out of its way to form a broad consensus on how to get everyone to participate in the networked economy, on what rules are to govern this new order, and how people can be trained for it," observed Zobel.

GIIC has a decentralized leadership structure consisting of three co-chairmen representing the Americas, Europe/Africa and Asia; over 50 commissioners from around the globe are represented by seven of their members on the board. Zobel's co-commissioners include Ray Lane, president of Oracle (US); Lu Xinkui, vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry of China; Richard Li, chairman of the Executive Pacific Century Group; Don Reed, executive director of Cable & Wireless.

The GIIC Asia regional conference will focus on the theme, "Asia in the New Economy: Knowledge as Capital." It will include representatives of the business sector, research and academic institutions.