ASEAN CCI strives to wipe out poverty

JAKARTA (JP): The ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASEAN CCI) supports ASEAN 2020's economic vision of eradicating poverty and increasing the region's share of world trade.

In its two-day meeting here ASEAN CCI also decided to focus its activities during the next three years on three economic sectors: food and agriculture, capital goods and tourism.

ASEAN CCI's chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, said the vision of ASEAN 2020, initiated by ASEAN heads of state last December, should include efforts to eradicate poverty.

He suggested a program in which regional governments and private sectors aggressively pursued solutions to poverty.

"As parts of our strategic plans, we have defined a number of action plans to eradicate poverty in the region. We will bring our proposal to respective governments in ASEAN," Aburizal said after the closing of the two-day meeting.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

During their first informal summit here last December, ASEAN leaders agreed to map out an ASEAN vision for the year 2020, a guideline for direction beyond the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 2003.

At that summit the leaders agreed to assign ministers to develop an ASEAN vision for 2020.

The ministers were asked to submit their report to the Second Informal Summit which will be held in Malaysia this year concurrently with ASEAN's 30th anniversary.

The chairman of the executive committee of the ASEAN CCI Council, Jose Concepcion, said ASEAN economic ministers had asked for input from businesspeople to help map out the vision.

As ASEAN was setting a timetable for trade liberalization for 2003, it was decided it should also consider setting a timetable for eradicating poverty and 2020 was the target year.

"If we can increase by 50 percent per capita income of people in the region who are below the poverty line, it will increase our market for the world," Concepcion said.

In 1993, more than 1.3 billion people in developing countries struggled to survive on less than $1 a day. Over one billion of these people were in the Asia-Pacific region, 514.7 million were in South Asia, 445.8 million were in East Asia and the Pacific, and 73.5 million were in China.

There are about 22 million people living below the poverty line in Indonesia.

When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was set up in 1948, wealthy countries benefited from the agreement as they dominated 70 percent of world trade.

"But, 50 years later, 70 percent of world trade is still in the developed countries in spite of the fact that they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the developing countries in terms of membership and population," Concepcion said.

GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

Concepcion warned ASEAN and other developing nations that developed countries would defend their trade domination by forcing developing countries to open their markets and introducing new issues at the WTO.

New issues

ASEAN, together with other developing countries, was able to prevent the inclusion of new issues like labor standards, the multilateral investment treaty, competition policy and government procurement, from getting on the WTO first ministerial meeting's agenda in Singapore last December.

"Developed countries, however, will be adamant for the inclusion of these new issues. Thus, it will be unrealistic to assume that these issues will be put at rest.

"Developing countries, therefore, must prepare fully for upcoming multilateral negotiations," he said, promising ASEAN CCI would back ASEAN governments.

He said ASEAN countries, which have enjoyed high economic growth, should continue to increase their share of world trade.

Aburizal said ASEAN CCI was sounding out cooperation among ASEAN businesses to develop food and agriculture, capital goods and tourism in the region.

He said food and agriculture was an important sector because the greatest challenge for ASEAN in the next century would be how it would feed its people. ASEAN will have one billion people by 2020.

In addition, ASEAN was one of the world's largest importers of capital goods, he said. Last year, ASEAN suffered a deficit of almost $40 billion from capital goods trade.

"Thus, I think it is very feasible for us to collaborate to develop an ASEAN capital goods industry to supply our own needs. Of course, we would invite ventures from outside ASEAN to develop the industry," Aburizal said.

He said tourism would be the largest foreign exchange earner for most ASEAN countries early next century. So, tourism cooperation within ASEAN would benefit the region. (rid)

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