Noy, Australian PM to hold bilateral talks today

BALI – President Aquino will hold bilateral talks with newly elected Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Brunei today.

Secretary Ricky Carandang of the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office told Manila-based reporters covering the 21st Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum here that the meeting is “confirmed.”

“I understand it’s going to be at the ASEAN summit in Brunei – on the sidelines of ASEAN. As you know, the ASEAN summit includes countries from outside the ASEAN plus three, the ASEAN plus, plus system,” he said in a briefing.

“That meeting with Prime Minister Abbott will take place in Brunei,” Carandang said, but provided no further details.

Aquino was supposed to have bilateral talks with Peru and Mexico here in this island-resort, but these were called off at the last minute.

Aquino yesterday made a pitch for the Philippines as an ideal investment site before chief executive officers and ranking business officials attending the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) dialogue here.

“As we said before, the mission here to a large part is to continue to attract more investments into the country so they can create more jobs, and this morning was dedicated to dialogues with international business leaders to do just that,” the President said.

“We have very stable macro-economic fundamentals, low inflation, low interest rates, steady growth and so we can provide a stable environment for investors to grow their businesses. So that has been our general pitch,” he said.

He said the country has shown economic stability amid “uncertainty in the global economic environment,” including slow growth in Europe and the government shutdown in the United States.