1. Debt (1 x 30)

1. Debt (1 x 30)
ASEAN speed up 2010 FTA deadline
JP/16/ASEAN
ASEAN asked to cut 2010 free trade deadline

Southeast Asian nations should advance their 2010 deadline
for dismantling all tariff barriers to cope with rising
competition for investments, ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo
Severino proposed Wednesday.

"To wait for 2010 when the rest of the world is marching on
might be too long," he told a media forum in Manila.

He declined to suggest a fresh deadline, saying this should be
worked out by the member states but pointed out that "benchmarks"
could be set to speed up a free trade area covering 500 million
people in the region.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) launched a
tariff cutting exercise in 1993 to forge the ASEAN Free Trade
Area (AFTA).

The AFTA plan reached a milestone in January 2002 when the six
older members of the group and the original signatories of AFTA
-- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand -- dropped their tariffs on trade with one another to
zero to five percent.

The six countries account for more than 96 percent of trade in
the region. The other members of ASEAN are Cambodia, Laos,
Myanmar and Vietnam.

The target of a minimum of zero to five percent tariffs was
accelerated twice partly in reaction to a financial crisis in
1997 that dragged the region to its worst recession in history.

ASEAN leaders had decided on a 2010 deadline for total
abolition of tariffs on inter-ASEAN trade by the senior members.

The target for the newer members is 2015.