ASEAN gains artificial: Senator

ASEAN gains artificial: Senator

PUERTO AZUL, Philippines (AFP): The industrialization achieved
in Southeast Asia is only "artificial," and will not last,
Philippine Senate President Edgardo Angara told a business
conference yesterday.

Angara said the gains by the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) were based on "artificial industrialization,"
adding that "this kind of industrialization does not endure."

"When Southeast Asia stops being attractive as a site, the
foreign investors move on and our indigenous economies can revert
to their old pre-industrialization forms," he told delegates at
the ASEAN Business Forum.

Angara said the region's industrial growth was based on
innovations made outside Southeast Asia adding that "true
industrialization... means having a measure of technological
independence."

He called for greater technological and vocational training in
the region as well as a "leapfrog" from agriculture and
smokestack industries to high-technology and information-based
industries.

He also endorsed greater trade liberalization, including the
creation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area early in the next century.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and
the Philippines.