The 4-day seminar titled "Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation SME Business Forum-2003" is being organised by Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and it starts today at the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

CCCI President Amir Humayun Mahmud Chowdhury is leading the delegation. The other delegation members include incumbent and former CCCI Vice-Presidents Manzur-Ul Amin Chowdhury and MA Latif.

CCCI sources said the visit of the delegation followed an invitation made by the Thai authority during the recent visit of a 65-member high powered Thai trade delegation to the port city last month. The delegation was led by Governor of Chiang Mai province Suwat Tantipat.

Sources said trade experts and representatives from different countries will gather at the seminar to discuss different aspects on further development of small and medium scale industrial enterprises of least-developed countries by placing case studies and exchanging experiences of the industries of their respective countries.

Besides Bangladesh, trade experts and representatives from Thailand, Japan, Chile, Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, China, USA, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Canada are expected to take part in the seminar.

CCCI sources said besides participating in different sessions of the seminar, the CCCI delegation will also visit different places in Thailand to see for themselves the trade and investment prospects between two countries.

Besides meeting their Thai counterpart at Chiang Mai and Bangkok, CCCI delegation will hold talks with government officials to expedite the process of investment and trade in various sectors in two countries following the growing relationship as well as in the spirit of Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) signed between CCCI and Thai Chamber bodies last month.