ASEAN shelves idea of freeing trade faster

ASEAN shelves idea of freeing trade faster

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (AFP): The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) decided yesterday to put in cold storage a proposal to speed up the creation of a regional free trade area by 2000, officials said.

Economic Ministers of the seven-nation grouping made the decision at a meeting of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) Council, the body charged with steering the region towards tariff-free trade.

Singapore's Trade and Industry Minister Yeo Cheow Tong told reporters after the meeting that ASEAN had agreed "to explore how to accelerate AFTA at future meetings."

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and newcomer Vietnam.

Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei in July urged ASEAN to advance the deadline for AFTA to 2000, three years ahead of the target year 2003 set by the regional grouping.

The sultan had warned that other regions were overtaking ASEAN in economic cooperation and were liberalizing their markets to attract investment, saying the grouping must "respond to this competition."

The AFTA council meeting yesterday also endorsed the inclusion of unprocessed agricultural products into the Common Effective Preferential Tariffs (CEPT) scheme, the mechanism that allows gradual tariff-slashing until the goal of a free trade area is achieved.

Nearly 1,358 tariff lines representing 68 percent of all unprocessed agricultural items are to be included into the CEPT scheme by Jan. 1,1996, officials said.

Another 402 tariff lines representing 20 percent of unprocessed agricultural products would be included within the next seven years while the remainder are to be subject to a special arrangement which was not spelt out.