ASEAN action plan to form trade community

ASEAN action plan to form trade community

Agence France-Presse, Vientiane

Southeast Asian leaders sealed on Monday a six-year plan to fast- track trade liberalization and regional integration to create a powerful ASEAN community by 2020.

Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Laos adopted the Vientiane Action Program, the second in a series of plans to steer the grouping towards its long-term vision.

Strategies outlined in the program's to push progress include:

* An ASEAN economic community

The plan aims to "remove, where feasible, barriers to the free flow of goods, services and skilled labor, and freer flow of capital by 2010."

Tariffs for products will be removed by 2010 for ASEAN's six more developed members -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- and 2015 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

A separate agreement was signed to liberalize tariffs in 11 key sectors, including autos, textiles and electronics, by 2007 for the six more developed members and 2012 for the other four.

The program also promises assistance to the less developed nations to ease disruption caused by market adjustments.

It pledges to cut transaction costs for businesses, harmonize customs procedures, strengthen intellectual property rights, accelerate open skies arrangements and make ASEAN a critical logistics and services support hub.

* An ASEAN security community

This aims to ensure a peaceful and stable region, "promote human rights and obligations" and good governance.

Plans are mooted for an early warning system to prevent conflicts. An ASEAN humanitarian crisis center may be set up, with plans to create notably safe havens in conflict areas.

* An ASEAN socio-cultural community

This aspires to lift the quality of life across the region and forge an ASEAN cultural identity. It includes plans to cut poverty and raise living standards, prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, build a "drug-free ASEAN" by 2015.