13 Quotes from New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the APEC CEO Summit 2024

Prime Minister of New Zealand Christopher Luxon underscored the critical role of investment and technology in economic productivity. He stressed the need for standardized global protocols for e-banking and e-invoicing, suggesting collaboration through bodies like APEC. He noted the shift from a world of efficiency to one of resilience post-COVID and called for collective action to create a frictionless financial system. According to Prime Minister Luxon, global security and stability are inextricably linked and there can't be one without the other. Here are 13 quotes from his intervention at a dialogue about financial access and economic growth at the 2024 APEC CEO Summit. 

1. “I think investment is critical to all economies. It’s about pools of capital, but also, it's about knowledge transfer."

2. “Technology… that is the way forward in terms of being able to bring more people into the system. But obviously to participate in the economy and the way that we want to, I do feel there's a huge opportunity in an APEC world order for us to think very precisely about the protocols.” 

3. “The global protocols around all of that enable e-banking and e-invoicing are actually something that collectively we should be working on in bodies like APEC, for example, to get that standardized across the countries and across the globe.”

4. “Open banking promises a lot, but actually, very few countries have actually been able to deliver that easily, and that's certainly very much our focus is more FinTech application, more technology, more adoption of open banking.”

5. “Pre-COVID, we moved from a world of efficiency to one now of resilience. And in that process, in many ways, with 195 countries in the world, the danger is that each country goes off and does its own thing, dealing with its own needs in the confines of its own jurisdiction.”

6. "I think there is a real opportunity now post-COVID, for us to come together through the global forum like APEC, the work of the IMF, WTO, others, to actually get the operating system in place that actually does allow a much more frictionless financial system.”

7. “We need a lot more competition for open banking. But it is, it is practical things now, like e-invoicing, protocols that need to get sorted between countries.”

8. “I still remain an incredible optimist about the future and where we can go as a world together, I do think we need to redouble our efforts and come together to actually reinforce the international rules-based system.”

9. "I think we got to keep calling out those values that we hold to. Finding like-minded partners and countries all around the world that think similarly and working together on those challenges that we have.”

10. “All of our economies have done exceptionally well in the last 70 years off the back of a rules-based system. So why would we want to go backwards on that?”

11. “We have had a focus on global efficiency, and now everyone's moved to resiliency. We need to make sure that that isn't a code for acting independently and not in a joined-up fashion.”

12. “For APEC leaders, it's about reinforcing the international rules-based system because when we have security and stability in the world, we also get economic prosperity. The two are inextricably linked, and so you can't have one without the other.”

13. “It’s a good wakeup call post-COVID now to think about a new world that we want to imagine, and that requires us very strongly to think about the rules-based order: what needs to be invented, reinvented, adapted, adopted, changed.”