QUARTERLY PROGRESS REPORT: JANUARY 1, 2018 – MARCH 31, 2018

Key achievements include the coordination with 14 government agencies to develop and/or implement 24 interventions on a range of technical areas. The team finalized two technical reports and implemented one workshop, with a focus on laying the groundwork for new activities planned for the remainder of 2018. In Program Area 1: Green Growth, US-ATAARI continued its work on a fossil fuel subsidy reform peer review assessment in Viet Nam. The team conducted an economy-level review, meeting with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) of Viet Nam and other relevant stakeholders to discuss the selected subsidies and their efficiency and effectiveness in Viet Nam's current political and economic environment. The team finalized the Viet Nam FFS report, which analyzed several fossil fuel subsidies, provided insights from the peer review process, and set forth recommendations for reform when the subsidies were found to be inefficient. In Program Area 2: Trade and Investment Facilitation, US-ATAARI launched a supply chain capacity building initiative in 2013, which has provided assistance to developing economies to improve their supply chains along key areas, including advance rulings, expedited shipments, and pre-arrival processing (PAP) in Viet Nam. The team finalized an action plan to advance recommendations laid out in the resultant supply chain capacity building assessment report. In Program Area 3: Regulatory Reform, US-ATAARI implemented a policy dialogue to provide an overview of the two years of progress under the Second APEC Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) Action Plan to date. The team also refined a study examining APEC economies' legal infrastructure on the EoDB topic of enforcing contracts and implemented a workshop to discuss the findings and recommendations from the Assessing APEC Getting Credit and Enforcing Contracts Frameworks according to International Best Practices study. In Program Area 4: Human Security, US-ATAARI's Study on Assessing the Economic Value of Green Infrastructure in Coastal Ecosystems to Disaster Risk Reduction, Response and Coastal Resilience in APEC Region addresses the need to increase understanding of the value of green infrastructure to support policy makers in better evaluating the impact of green infrastructure development and management, and the development of disaster risk reduction and response and coastal resiliency strategies. The team coordinated with USAID and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to conduct the study. The US-ATAARI team also trained 73 participants in various activities during the first quarter of 2018. The team's progress during this period on key performance indicators (KPIs) is reported in Table 1, with a more detailed progress summary included as Annex A: Progress Summary. The KPIs generate the performance information necessary to guide adaptive management of the activity to ensure resources are applied where they may have the most positive impact. The US-ATAARI team's work in the first quarter of 2018 laid the groundwork for new activities planned for the remainder of 2018, with a focus on implementing the approved work plan. The team's progress and achievements during this period demonstrate its commitment to advancing regional integration and promoting sustainable growth in the APEC region.