Start date now seen as Dec. 31, 2015, not Jan. 1
PHNOM PENH - A planned economic
union in Southeast Asia is likely to be delayed by a year until the end of 2015
because some countries are not ready, Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said on Wednesday.
Surin said economic ministers
from the 10 ASEAN countries had asked him for the delay at a meeting in late
August and he would put the idea to heads of government at a summit in
November.
Foreign ministers decided in
April that the ASEAN Economic Community should start on Jan. 1, 2015, he told a
meeting of energy ministers in Phnom Penh.
"Your economic colleagues
looked around the landscape and realised that they need one more year, so they
have asked me to communicate with all sectoral bodies up to the leaders that we
should speak with one voice," he said.
The bloc would therefore be born
on Dec. 31, 2015.
The ASEAN Economic Community
(AEC) would allow free movement of goods, capital and skilled labour across a
region with a combined economy of $2 trillion and 600 million people.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam, countries with vastly different political and economic systems.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are
among the poorest countries in Asia, while Indonesia is a G20 country and
Singapore is a thriving global financial centre.
Surin, explaining the proposed
delay to the AEC, said a number of challenges needed to be addressed, including
bridging development gaps between member countries.
"The world is expecting us
to get there all together," he said, suggesting the AEC would lose
credibility if it did not include all 10 ASEAN members.
A land border dispute between
Thailand and Cambodia plus, more
recently, competing territorial claims by four of its members, and China and
Taiwan, in the South China Sea have also laid bare diplomatic differences
within ASEAN.
Some analysts have suggested the
AEC might not start as a fully formed bloc, and that its more developed members
might have to push on with integration in a two-tier model, leaving the others
at risk of missing out on regional investment.
Reuters
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment