APEC 2017 Finance and Central Bank Deputies’ Meeting (Photo: VNA)

In his opening address, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Finance Tran Xuan Ha said that the meeting discusses important issues, which are reported to finance ministers meeting the following day. APEC finance and bank deputies agreed on four priorities at the previous meeting held in Nha Trang in February, including Long-term Investment in Infrastructure, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance and Financial Inclusion.

Sebastian Eckardt, the World Bank's Acting Country Director for Vietnam, said: “For Vietnam, this may be important agenda because there are a lot of multinational companies that are operating here in Vietnam. And these companies are still operating across border, so it is very important to have first of all a sound legal and regulatory framework including on transfer pricing. It’s also important to build capacity in tax administration to perform effective orders of the very complex operations and transactions that typically adhere with multinational cooperation”.

The meeting also focused on the implementation of the Cebu Action Plan (CAP), promoting long-term investment in infrastructure, and dealing with challenges in the Public Private Partnership investment projects.

Delegates offered their opinions to the draft Joint Ministerial Statement with the final version to be submitted to the APEC Finance Ministers’ meeting on Saturday.