PM Lee Hsien Loong at the 32nd ASEAN Summit Working Dinner

Your Majesty, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to all of you to this ASEAN retreat in Singapore. It is Singapore’s turn to Chair ASEAN this year, and it is our honour and our pleasure to host our ASEAN colleagues and work together to take ASEAN forward.

We have a full agenda ahead in the next two days, both within ASEAN as well as with our external partners. We need to pursue the initiatives under the three pillars and make progress towards our goal of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”.

Singapore has adopted the themes of “resilience” and “innovation” for our ASEAN Chairmanship, because of the need for ASEAN to strengthen its collective resilience against growing trans-boundary threats like terrorism, climate change and cyber security. We also need to make use of technology and innovation as sources of growth and development in order to improve our peoples’ lives.

Singapore hopes to work with our ASEAN partners to tackle these shared concerns. We do not expect to resolve all the issues within the one year span of our Chairmanship but we do hope to prompt a productive discussion and develop a consensus amongst the ASEAN partners on the overall approach, as crystallised in our Vision Statement, in order to take ASEAN forward. We also hope to put forth tangible initiatives that will contribute to a resilient and innovative ASEAN.

Over the next two days, the ASEAN Leaders will discuss our shared ideas to take on these challenges as well as the concrete steps to realise this vision.

I would like to thank Your Majesty and my fellow leaders for supporting Singapore’s Chairmanship. I look forward to hearing your views and working with you to take ASEAN forward during this year.

Thank you.