The two-day meeting on gender, opened in the central province of Quang Nam on Sept. 13, heard reports on the progress being made by the APEC in boosting women's involvement in its operations.

Ha Thi Khiet, President of the National Committee on the Advancement of Women, reported that Vietnamese women occupied 27.3 percent of the seats of the National Assembly and accounted for between 22 and 35 percent of the nation's business executives.

At another two-day meeting, which closed in central Da Nang city on Sept. 13, members from the Anti-corruption taskforce exchanged views on ways to implement the UN convention on anti-corruption, the Santiago commitment and the APEC action plan on anti-corruption.

The same meeting also approved three projects for 2007, including a workshop on money laundering-related corruption that is scheduled to take place in Thailand. The workshop will be co-sponsored by China, the US, Australia and Chile.

A workshop about the international community's role in strengthening cooperation mechanism in the Asian-Pacific region is to take place in Peru under the co-sponsorship of Viet Nam, the Republic of Korea and the US.

The third project is on the exchange of information about trans-national legal agreements within the APEC framework.

The Committee on Trade and Investment entered its third day of sitting to discuss the implementation of the Busan business agenda, investment liberalisation and facilitation, transparency and anti-corruption, safe trading and structural reform.

Pham Quynh Mai, Deputy Head of the APEC-ASEM Section, the Commercial Policy Service, under the the Trade Ministry, said Viet Nam and Australia have received high praise from participants for their leading role in handling the evaluation of liberalising and facilitation of trade, and transaction fees during the 2001-06 period.

The taskforce on terror attack control met for the third time this year to review its yearly programme, including the need for anti-terrorism measures by each and every member economy. They also discussed programmes to improve members' capacity to combat terrors, cooperation among APEC member economies and a series of other initiatives to ensure security./.(VNA)