Asean Secretary-General Dr Kao Kim Hourn delivers a speech. - Photo: Borneo Bulletin/ANN
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Asean will continue to work with member states and external partners to invest and plan ahead to tackle the challenges faced during pandemics, following SARS, swine flu, bird flu and Covid-19.
Member states have agreed on setting up three Asean Centres for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam that needs to be finalised and move forward, said Asean Secretary-General Dr Kao Kim Hourn.
He said this as he outlined several challenges faced by Asean in his keynote address ‘Cooperation, Collaboration and the Youth: The Bedrock of Innovation and Sustainability’ at Universiti Brunei Darussalam on Tuesday (Aug 13).
The Asean secretary-general also highlighted the challenges of technology.
“This year the Asean Digital Ministers Meeting and Asean Ministerial Meeting on Science, Technology and Innovation deemed artificial intelligence as the top priority issue.
“Economic ministers launched the negotiation on the Asean digital economic framework agreement last year, stressing that digital economic as a top priority and those negotiations have been ongoing, which hopefully by this year will include key issues for next year’s application process to turn the issues into opportunities for Asean to increase the Asean Digital Economy to USD2 trillion.
"We also have to focus on education, capacity training and digital skill training which is significant for us.
"The technology sector poses a challenge and also an opportunity for Asean," he said. - Borneo Bulletin/ANN
