PM Lawrence Wong at the Launch of the Green Economy Partnership Agreement Negotiations (Oct 2025)

(Photo by The Straits Times ©️SPH Media Limited)

President Boric,
Prime Minister Luxon,
Excellencies,

I am pleased to join you to launch negotiations on the Green Economy Partnership Agreement or GEPA.

This is a milestone in international trade.

Because in the past, we tended to see growth and sustainability as competing priorities.

But technological breakthroughs have challenged this assumption.

Energy sources are becoming greener, and these green energy sources are becoming viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Capital is flowing into low-carbon and energy-efficient solutions which can help reduce emissions.

These developments demonstrate that growth and sustainability can, in fact, be mutually reinforcing.

And trade can facilitate our collective green transition, by facilitating the cross-border flows of the goods, services and technologies and finance that enable this.

This is why Singapore, Chile and New Zealand established the Joint Working Group on Trade and the Green Economy, to assess how best to advance trade and climate action together.

After several rounds of discussions, our officials have recommended initial topics to be considered under a plurilateral GEPA.

They include issues that have grown in salience, like new environmental goods such as sustainable aviation fuel, which can make a significant impact if widely adopted across borders; non-physical environmental goods like carbon credits, which can be traded to support the net-zero transition; as well as trade-related climate measures, which can be better aligned with policy goals to minimise trade disruptions.

Our aim is to set common rules and standards around these topics, so that there will be coherence and common foundations in what we do.

And, by taking such actions, the GEPA can help to modernise trade and investment policies to support flows of environmental goods and services; and unlock new opportunities in the green economy for our companies, and good jobs in these sectors.

It will also help lower barriers to trade while accelerating the green transition.

Singapore is proud to partner Chile and New Zealand in this endeavour. We may be three small countries, but we have a proven track record of pioneering innovative agreements together.

We started the P4 Agreement (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) with Brunei and that evolved into TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and now the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership).

We also started the first-of-its-kind plurilateral Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA).

And that continues to receive interest from other aspiring economies – a sign of the value which others see in it.

Now, we are applying that same collaborative spirit to the green economy with this GEPA.

As we develop the GEPA, I encourage our officials to be bold; to look beyond conventional approaches, embrace new ideas, and draw on private sector insights. I am confident that by joining hands, we can turn trade into a force for good, and catalyse economic growth while doing our part for the environment and for global climate action.

I look forward to working with my counterparts, and to a substantial outcome by the next APEC Summit.

Thank you.