Singapore - ASEAN must continue to pay attention to community-building efforts: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE: Singapore's Foreign Minister, K Shanmugam, said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must continue to pay strong attention to community-building efforts.

He said this in an email interview with Channel NewsAsia, ahead of the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia, which starts on Tuesday.

When ASEAN leaders gather in Cambodia for their 20th summit, achieving the Community Vision by 2015 will be very much on their minds.

Mr Shanmugam, wants to see discussions focused on implementing economic agreements and speeding up integration, particularly for more recent initiatives like the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC).

He said economic integration is key to helping ASEAN stay competitive in a fast-changing economic landscape.

The aim is to create a better-connected ASEAN to draw markets closer and make the grouping more attractive for investments.

Mr Shanmugam said: "It will also create opportunities for businesses in areas such as infrastructure development, logistics and IT. Singapore strongly supports the MPAC and we will continue to push for its timely and effective implementation.

"We also expect discussion on how ASEAN could further engage its dialogue partners, international agencies and private sector in the priority projects, whose involvement is crucial to the success of the initiative."

Political observers agree and called for stronger resolve.

Associate Professor Simon Tay, Chairman Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said: "Governments really need that leadership from the top to push home the message and break down some of the barriers.

"This is where ASEAN needs to learn the negative lessons of the Eurozone, what not to integrate, but I think that a deeper stronger agenda on economic liberalisation in services especially financial will need to come from ASEAN."

On the economic front, Mr Shanmugam notes that many ASEAN countries are projected to see healthy economic growth in the coming year.

Observers note that despite the negative trade and financial spillovers from the Eurozone crisis, ASEAN economies continued to expand in 2011, albeit at a slower rate than the previous year.

In particular, growth in export-oriented economies such as Singapore moderated to 4.9 per cent while that of Malaysia moderated to 5.1 per cent in 2011.

In 2012, growth for Singapore was 14.8 per cent and 7.2 per cent for Malaysia.

By contrast, supported by robust domestic demand, the Indonesian economy grew by 6.5 per cent in 2011, slightly faster than the 6.2 per cent growth in 2010.

Observers said the balance sheets of ASEAN banks also remain healthy.

They added that the positive news coming out of Europe is encouraging.

Mr Shanmugam said: "Good news in Europe is good news for ASEAN".

Political watchers expect ASEAN leaders to be briefed on the elections in Myanmar and the Malaysian Prime Minister's recent visit to the country.

Associate Professor Simon Tay said: "In the past, ASEAN will always be criticised about Myanmar having political problems and human rights issues and therefore Myanmar was a problem in the corner.

"Now with the Chairmanship coming up, Myanmar could be a problem in the centre.

"What I mean is that I am very hopeful about the political opening but the question of capacity and questions of consistency and keeping that political opening moving, this by putting the Chairmanship back on Myanmar's hands for 2014 just one year before the community will become a critical time.

"I hope in this run up, we will see continued efforts in Myanmar itself to liberalise and externally, partners like the USA and the European Union will really start to re-look at some of their more stringent sanctions and loosen them up so that when the time comes, ASEAN as a group, including Myanmar, can deal with the US and with the European Union. So far, the pace of change has surprised everyone on the upside."

ASEAN's leaders will also take stock of the grouping's ties with its dialogue partners.

One key partner is the United States with President Barack Obama, who attended the third ASEAN-US Leaders meeting in Bali, as well as his first East Asian Summit last year.

But one key concern is the impact of an election year on US interest in ASEAN affairs.

Mr Shanmugam said despite 2012 being an election year, the US has kept up the momentum of its broad-based and multi-faceted engagement of the region.

He expects the US to continue to work with ASEAN on bilateral and regional initiatives, to enhance ASEAN-US ties.

The US recently announced its representatives for an ASEAN-US Eminent Persons Group, which will review and recommend ways to further strengthen the partnership.

- CNA/ck

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