Asia-Pacific Region which has been undergoing dynamic and rapid economic development; and the Territory is fully expected to continue to play a major role in the future.
The Japanese economy, for its part, must bear its share of the responsibility of a global economy in response to the emer- gence of a sophisticated world-wide interdependence, and it is on this point that I would like to expand by emphasizing three major areas in which Japan will play a more active role.
Firstly, Japan will continue with its policy of encourage- ment of non-inflationary sustainable growth led by domestic demand and structural adjustment, and will also further promote the import of manufactured goods into Japan. That Japan is hotly pursuing this goal can be seen
can be seen in the following
in the following statistic: the . combined total of manufactured imports from Asia-NIES, ASEAN and China to Japan has seen a massive increase from 8.8 billion U.S. dollars in 1985, to 36.1 billion U.S. dollars in 1991. The Japa- nese Government fully appreciates that it is becoming more impor- tant for Japan to play the role of a major absorber in the Asia- Pacific Region, and as can be seen above, is acting accordingly.
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At the same time, the Japanese economy is facing difficult times, the result primarily of stagnation in demand and falling asset values. On August 28th this year, the Japanese Government decided to implement a comprehensive package of economic measures in effect totalling 86.7 billion U.S. dollars. The economic measures will include the expansion of spending in the public investment sector which in turn will include the advance procure- ment of land for public works projects and the facilitation of private sector capital investment. It is my hope that these measures will firmly place the Japanese economy back on the road to its goal of non-inflationary sustainable growth thereby con- tributing to the steady development of the world economy.
The second point in this section is that Japan will endeavor to maintain and strengthen the GATT trading system together with Hong Kong - the Territory acting as a standard-bearer for free trade. Given that our reliance on free and open trading arrange- ments is the source of this Region's vitality, the prompt and successful conclusion to the Uruguay Round of GATT talks should be one of
of the priority issues for this region. In addition to this, I am pleased to see that APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Coop- eration), a confederation of a number of the Region's economies initiated in November 1989, is already drawing on the Region's potential and is fast becoming a driving force for stability and prosperity. I would like at this point to reiterate Japan's strong desire to see APEC make steady progress towards the next century and beyond.
My third point relates to the promotion of direct investment and the transfer of technology. As I mentioned earlier, Japan now stands as the top investor in Hong Kong's manufacturing sector. In line with this, in the field of technical cooperation, for the last three years the Japan International Cooperation Agency
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