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Many people in the world believe that in the 21st century, the Asia-Pacific - Asia in particular - will play a more important role in global economy and politics and that Asia will become an important engine for the world economy.

Apart from boosting our long-term economic strength like other Asian economic powers, Philippine companies expanding overseas and going beyond our comfort zones, or going to some uncharted territories, will help sharpen our management skills.

The great problem there is we have to have the cooperation of those other Asian countries.

You are slowly developing some multinationals of your own. We certainly hope that some of them will look in this direction when they look for opportunities because the progress of Southeast Asia is important to China, just as China's progress is important to us.

Throughout Philippine history, it's the immigrants who built fortunes and, in the process, helped build Philippine economy.

The nation will benefit in the long term if it continues to be open to foreign expertise. This will help the country to establish its business culture and environment faster, based on international best practice.

We sincerely hope that south Asian countries will respect and live in amity with each other, and achieve common development, and that south Asia will enjoy peace, stability and prosperity.

The Philippines is strategically located and blessed with the greatest resource: its people, who are hard-working, very loyal, and very adaptive.

On the economy, the U.S. cumulatively is our most important investor, most important trading partner, most important sort of tourists, and we have now a tie that will... a link that will be here for many, many years to come, and that is the big Philippine-American community in the United States - three million of them.

From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.