Hanoi (VNA) - Deputy Minister of ForeignAffairs Nguyen Quoc Dung, head of Vietnam’s SOM ASEAN, attended an onlinehigh-level dialogue on ASEAN’s recovery post-COVID-19 on July 30.

Held by the ASEAN Secretariat, the dialogue aimed tocollect opinions on the building of the bloc’s master plan on pandemic responseand post-pandemic recovery, as requested by ASEAN leaders at the 36th ASEAN Summit in June.

It brought together hundreds of delegates from ASEANmember countries and regional and international organisations.

Dung, who is also Chairman of the ASEAN CoordinatingCouncil Working Group on Public Health Emergencies (ACCWG-PHE), suggestedeconomic recovery work should be done in steps with clear focuses, concentratingon production, tourism, and transport, with more attention to be paid todisadvantaged groups.

He stressed the need to ensure the dual goals of containingthe pandemic while rapidly recovering economic activities.

As ACCWG-PHE Chairman, Dung called for the involvementfrom the private sector, international organisations, and ASEAN partners in thebuilding of the plan, first of all the draft plan framework.

The master plan, which will be constantly updated, isscheduled to be submitted to the 37th ASEAN Summit in November.

At the dialogue, experts from the World Bank (WB), theAsian Development Bank (ADB), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and thePacific (ESCAP), and the World Economic Forum (WEF) pointed to a gloomyeconomic outlook for the region and the world.

Given this, they stressed the significance ofcoordination between countries and sectors in pandemic response as well aseconomic recovery.

They proposed prioritising such areas as healthcare,social welfare, education, food security, and high-quality infrastructure,adding that digital technology and the application of Industry 4.0 play animportant role./.