As part of its initiative to maintain active engagement with relevant stakeholders in Germany, ASEAN Ambassadors met with H.E. Mr. Hans-Joachim Fucktel, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) at the Ministry’s Berlin headquarters on 8 March 2016. Also present at the meeting were senior officials from the Ministry’s offices in Berlin and Bonn, as well as accompanying officers from ASEAN embassies.
Mr. Fuchtel, who is also Germany’s Governor of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), took the opportunity of the meeting to promote to ASEAN Ambassadors the upcoming 49th Annual Meeting of the ADB. He invited ASEAN countries to participate in the Meeting, which will be held in Hamburg on 2-5 May 2016. Under the theme "Cooperating for Sustainability", the meeting is intended to connect finance and development professionals to exchange ideas and achieve tangible results.
Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) is an area in which ASEAN Member States are interested to pursue further cooperation with Germany. During the meeting, both sides shared their concerns on specific areas of interest in TVET and how they can go about translating said interest into tangible actions. The meeting also noted to success story of collaboration between Porsche and Manila’s Don Bosco Institute of Technology in the TVET sector.