ASEAN to back common regional market: Goh

ASEAN to back common regional market: Goh

Agence France-Presse, Singapore

Southeast Asian leaders are likely to approve a common regional market when they meet in Bali next month, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in comments reported on Tuesday.

"I think the leaders will endorse this idea in Bali," Goh said in an interview with the British-based Financial Times, citing rising competition from China and India as strong incentives for the united position.

At the same time, Goh noted that no timetable has as yet been agreed by the 10-member Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN).

"The leaders understand the need to integrate the economies but the will to move faster is not yet clear, partly because of their own domestic considerations," the Financial Times quoted him as saying.

Goh and the other nine ASEAN leaders will meet on the Indonesian resort island of Bali for their annual summit from Oct. 7-8.

Singapore has been leading moves to create a common market for ASEAN, which is facing intense low-wage competition from the booming economies of China and India.

White-collar skills, especially in India's IT sector, are also proving an immense challenge to Singapore's ambitions of being an Asian high-tech hub.

Goh said that Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia will lead the call for the economic integration of ASEAN, which has a market of half a billion people, to occur more quickly.

ASEAN's original timetable for an ASEAN Economic Community had been set for 2020.

Goh and Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said earlier this month that this date was too far away, especially with China and India moving to complete a web of free-trade arrangements with their neighbors within a decade.

Both leaders said at a news conference here on Sept. 6 they would ask their fellow ASEAN leaders in Bali to accelerate the time frame but declined to give a new target date.

ASEAN leaders want the group to go beyond removing tariffs to creating a community where there is a free movement of goods, services, investments and capital.

The vision also includes a European Union-style integrated ASEAN market to be able to compete with China and India.

ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, makes decisions on the basis of consensus.