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.