Category Archives: United Nations ESCAP

7th EBAC Meeting & 1st Green Business Task Force Meeting

7^th EBAC meeting took place in Bangkok last Sunday. Due to the still on-going political situation, the UN building in Rachadamnern was closed and the meeting was kindly hosted by the Chairman of Greenspot Co., Ltd. Mr. Chote Sophonpanich at their office. It was nice to see some familiar faces, but even nicer to see a half room full of new faces and more younger generation as well.

The whole weekend became quite action packed as both task forces that I am part of had meetings at the British Club, scheduled for the day before the EBAC meeting. Green Business Task Force chaired by Mr. Carson Wen opened the day with an inaugural meeting for the members to get to know each other better and select the projects to support the UN ESCAP Sustainable Business Goals.

It was really nice to meet a room full of new people – all working in green business. Carson opened the meeting as the Chair welcoming everyone to the meeting and thanking all for coming despite the political crisis situation. Ms. Barbara Meynert, who chairs the Connectivity Task Force, spoke about ESCAP and their Sustainable Development Network.

In the introduction session, I witnessed three very interesting presentations about clean energy: wind, bio fuel and ground energy storing by Gilad Regev, Anthony Dixon and Bruce Hicks respectively.

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6th EBAC Meeting and 10th annual APBF 2013 in Bangkok

UNESCAP EBAC APBF

The 6th and my first EBAC meeting took place on Monday followed by the one and half day 10th annual Asia Pacific Business Forum. The great event got kickstarted on Sunday at the British Club in Bangkok, where we gathered together with the Connectivity Task Force lead by Barbara Meynert. It was also the first time for the whole team to meet together in person. We had had fractal meetings with parts of the team in Bangkok and Hong Kong, but this was the first time the full team was present. It’s just amazing how important meeting in person is, and how much more effective it is compared to exchanging emails and speaking over phone/Skype. The working team consists of 10 people with all very unique skills, and is set to deliver an online SME platform to connect and support the SMEs in the Asian region.

First of all, it’s a fun project to work with, but it is also a very important for the regions growth, which has been now stressed in many occasions. Over the EBAC welcome dinner, hosted generously by Barbara, the UN ESCAP Executive Secretary Ms. Noeleen Heyzer accented the importance of SMEs and the sustainable connectivity between them.

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Myanmar Trip

Myanmar Development week

I visited Myanmar recently. The main purpose was to meet some local business people but also to attend few presentation sessions at the Myanmar Development week held in Yangon and mainly organized by UN ESCAP and UMFCCI. My last trip to Myanmar was in 2005 and many things had naturally changed quite a bit since.

The Airport was functioning smoothly and I got through the immigration with no issues. Although I heard that one of the speakers at the development week had had some problems due to visa issues. A word of advice here, the tourist visa is easiest to apply, if you are visiting for a short time. (Also as a bonus you get much nicer treatment in the embassy than business visa applicants.)

We stayed at PARKROYAL Hotel Yangon, which exceeded my expectations. It was like a decent 4-5 star hotel in any Asian city. Everything worked perfectly. We booked a private city tour, which was really good. Of course we had to ask the tour guide to skip the pagodas and tourist attractions and to show us real Yangon life. Was really nice to have our own Wikipedia on Yangon for couple hours. Poor guy probably expected to do his usual routine tour.

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