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."