Singapore trade exec outlines 2 key areas for ASEAN post-2015 agenda

0
400

MyanmarThe Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should now look past tariff reduction toward the removal of non-tariff barriers to trade, and work at integration beyond the region as the next phase of its post-2015 ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) plan, said a Singaporean trade official.

Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang in his recent speech at the ASEAN Business Club in Singapore said that as 2015 fast approaches, ASEAN countries have all but eliminated or lowered their tariffs for virtually all goods to make the region tariff-free, and must now concentrate on the next phase of action.

“The focus now is on eliminating non-tariff barriers, improving trade facilitation and harmonizing standards to ensure that businesses will operate in a stable and predictable environment,” said Lim.

He added that as ASEAN countries work to develop the AEC’s post-2015 economic agenda, there is a need to deepen integration and lower trade barriers some more. He noted findings suggesting several areas “where improvements in infrastructure and connectivity policies could be further regulated to reduce boundaries across ASEAN and drive further integration.”

Another area to look at post-2015 is deeper integration that translates into expanding the concept beyond ASEAN’s borders, particularly into the successful conclusion of wider free trade agreements (FTAs) such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he continued.

The RCEP is seen to bring ASEAN and its six FTA partners—Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand—in closer economic linkages with each other, and integrate a third of the world’s GDP and over three billion people, or 45 percent of the world’s population.

It aims to set open, simple, and flexible trade rules for businesses to operate easily in, so as to further integrate ASEAN into the global value chain.

And while Lim concedes that the ongoing negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the China-Japan-Korea FTA, and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) may “signal a shift in trade and economic gravity away from ASEAN, these initiatives also offer the prospect of still larger integration with ASEAN.”

“Together with the TPP, the RCEP could provide a possible pathway to a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific, which, if realized, would be an unprecedented boost to economic interconnectivity,” he said.

ASEAN is today the seventh largest economy in the world, with a consumption and production market of 600 million people and an average annual GDP growth rate of 6 percent from 2002 to 2012 compared to the global average of 4 percent.

It also has the third largest GDP in Asia, at US$2.3 trillion in 2013.  By 2050, ASEAN is projected to be the fourth largest economy in the world after the EU, U.S., and China.

Photo: Jose Javier Martin Espartosa