ASEAN mulls 'open house' to all investors in 1999

ASEAN mulls 'open house' to all investors in 1999

MANILA (AFP): Nine Southeast Asian countries may temporarily grant "open house treatment" to all foreign investors by next year as part of joint efforts to address the financial crisis, a Philippine official said on Wednesday.

The proposal is "one of the package of bold measures" to be discussed by senior economic officials for adoption by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Assistant Trade Secretary Edsel Custodio told reporters.

ASEAN economic ministers, who met in Manila earlier this month, ordered senior officials to discuss "bold" approaches the ASEAN leaders may announce at a December summit in Hanoi.

Senior economic ministers are to meet next month for that purpose, Custodio said, without giving a location for the meeting.

The "open house treatment," to take effect in 1999 and 2000, would be "in response to the financial crisis which is still sweeping Asia because foreign direct investments in the region dropped 50 percent" from a year earlier in the first half of 1998, he said.

ASEAN members Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam signed a framework agreement in Manila in which they agreed to "national treatment" for their investors by 2010.

The treatment, subject to national statutes on foreign equity participation, would be extended to all foreign investors by 2020.

Custodio said the temporary short-term measure being mulled included relaxation of foreign equity limits and income tax holidays.

However, member countries do not have a common agenda and would have to come up with "negative" or exclusion lists, he added.

"After two years, ASEAN will have to revert back to the rule because each economy has a different set of incentive laws," Custodio said.

"There will also be domestic consultations to determine the scope of investments."