S’pore to host Asean Summit from Nov 11 to 15, prepares to hand over chair to Thailand

SINGAPORE — The Republic will host the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) Summit and related meetings from Sunday (Nov 11) to Thursday, as the country prepares to hand over the regional grouping’s rotating chairmanship to Thailand.

The meetings, chaired by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, will be held at the Suntec Singapore Convention Centre, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement on Saturday.

At the summit, leaders of the 10 Asean member states are expected to adopt the Asean Smart Cities Framework, which lays out the regional grouping’s definition of a smart city. 

They are also set to take stock of Asean’s achievements this year in strengthening “resilience and innovation”, the key themes under Singapore’s chairmanship, the PMO said.

The regional leaders will also discuss ways to take the grouping forward at a time of “geopolitical and economic change”.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will also be on the agenda, and Asean leaders and their partners are expected to discuss the progress of negotiations on the trade pact.

The partnership between Asean’s 10 member states, and Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea will create the world’s largest trading bloc, covering a third of the world’s present annual gross domestic product.

In September, at the World Economic Forum on Asean in Hanoi, Mr Lee said Asean was doing its utmost to make progress on RCEP, and hoped to achieve a substantial conclusion by the year’s end, though he had added that this was “not yet assured”.

Discussions on the trade pact will continue into 2019, TODAY understands.

In the coming week, there will be various fora where Asean leaders and their counterparts will exchange views on regional and global issues. For instance, there will be meetings between the regional grouping and China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, and informal breakfast summits with Australia and India.

Among the world leaders attending the event are US vice president Mike Pence and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

It will be Mr Putin’s first visit to Singapore as head of state, and he will attend the Asean-Russia Summit and the East Asia Summit (EAS), a regional forum of 18 Asia-Pacific nations. 

The US and Russia were admitted to the EAS in 2011.

Several prominent personalities have also been invited as guests of Singapore as the Asean chair. They are Mr Sebastian Pinera, president of Chile, which will chair the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum next year, and Ms Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

On Thursday, Mr Lee will hand over the chairmanship of Asean to Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha at the event’s closing ceremony.

Singapore took over from the Philippines as Asean chair in January this year, having last held the post in 2007. Thailand will chair the regional grouping in 2019, before Vietnam takes over in 2020.