ASEAN ministers allow members to review goods under AFTA pan
ASEAN ministers allow members to review goods under AFTA pan
YANGON (Dow Jones): Trade and industry ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) decided Monday to allow member countries to revise the list of goods that they have already pledged to include in the ASEAN free trade plan after Malaysia stuck to its plan to exclude its automotive industry from the arrangement.
"The (ASEAN trade and industry) ministers have come up with a solution, which is not exclusive to the Malaysian issue, but is a more generic way out," Hatanto Reksodipoetro, a director general at the Indonesian Industry and Trade Ministry, told Dow Jones Newswires.
"The solution allows any member country to change its concession if it finds it really difficult to open the industry."
It remains unclear whether this will mean that more goods will be allowed to be excluded from the ASEAN Free Trade Area, or AFTA.
Under AFTA, six of the 10 ASEAN members agreed to cut tariffs on an "inclusion list" of manufactured and agricultural products to 0 percent-5 percent by 2002. Countries are allowed to keep some sectors on a "temporary exclusion list", but they can only have about 15 percent of their tariff lines on this list by end- 2000.
ASEAN originally allowed countries to exclude certain goods from AFTA only if they are deemed important for such matters as national security or the welfare of citizens.
Malaysia's Minister for International Trade and Industry Rafidah Azis declined to comment.
An official with Thailand's Trade and Industry Ministry said the new arrangement could jeopardize AFTA.
"AFTA will break down," he told Dow Jones Newswires under condition of anonymity. "No country will be willing to include all of the goods they have already pledged to AFTA if a country reduces the number of goods (it has pledged)."
Malaysia was originally due to bring its car industry, which makes the Proton national car, under AFTA coverage, but late last year it said it would delay the market's opening, saying it needs more time to rehabilitate its car industry after being hurt by the recent economic crisis.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the trade and industry ministers agreed on Monday on the elements of an "e-ASEAN" framework agreement to pave the way for ASEAN's entry into the new information economy, according to the head of the task force established to chart the direction of this initiative.
"The senior economic officials in their meeting in Chiang Mai in October will look at the elements that we recommended and put (together) the wording for an e-ASEAN agreement, which hopefully will be approved by the ministers and brought to (ASEAN) leaders in November in Singapore," said former Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs R. Romulo.
He said that the task force's recommendations include a common information infrastructure, a friendly legal environment for e- commerce, and accessibility to the Internet for all.
Romulo said that because e-commerce requires a level of transparency not present in all ASEAN countries, its implementation in ASEAN will vary from country to country.
"Those who can go fast we'll move fast," he said. "They can move as fast as they can."