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."