ASEAN leaders, businessmen to hold meeting in Bali

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Southeast Asian political and business leaders will gather in Nusa Dua, Bali from Oct. 4 to Oct. 7 in a bid to boost government-private sector cooperation, and attract investment to the region.

Also expected to attend the business summit, titled Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Business and Investment Summit (ASEAN-BIS), are leaders and businessmen from Japan, China, South Korea and India, said the chairman of the organizing committee, Tanri Abeng, on Wednesday.

Malaysian Prime Minister (PM) Mahathir Mohammad, the Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra, Singaporean PM Goh Chok-Tong, Philippines' President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Vietnamese PM Phan Van Khai, Chinese PM Wen Jiabao and Indian PM Shri Atas Bahari Vajpayee, as well as President Megawati Soekarnoputri, have agreed to attend the forum.

The first ASEAN-BIS will precede the ninth ASEAN Summit scheduled for Oct. 7 to Oct. 8 on the island.

About 1,000 businessmen are expected to gather for the first forum, according to Tanri.

The Bali summit was agreed upon by ASEAN leaders during the seventh summit in Brunei Darussalam in November 2001, where they also established the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) to plan the summit.

Asked whether Tuesday's bombing at the luxury JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta would affect the business summit, Tanri said he remained optimistic that the terrorist attack would not deter participants from coming to the forum.

"Of course it will affect the summit. But businessmen like challenges," he said.

Also during the press conference, ASEAN-BAC's chairman Rudy J. Pesik said the business summit would also review ASEAN's attractiveness for investment following the implementation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).

"AFTA means that each of the ten ASEAN members is seen as a 'province' of ASEAN," said Rudy. "Thanks to AFTA, investors can establish a business in one ASEAN country, but can sell their products to the other nine countries free of import duties."

AFTA, which aims to forge the region into a single market of 500 million consumers, come fully into force in 2003 when the six original ASEAN members -- Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Brunei Darussalam -- cut import duties on almost all manufacturing products to between zero and five percent.

The new ASEAN members -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos -- are scheduled to implement the agreement in 2008.

Meanwhile, in Manila ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong said on Wednesday that ASEAN leaders will press ahead with the Oct.7-8 summit in Bali despite renewed security concerns following a deadly car bomb attack in Jakarta.

"We are all committed to the ASEAN meeting in Bali, so we will go," Ong was quoted by Associated Press as saying. "We just have to be very careful."