ASEAN to mull integration roadmap
ASEAN to mull integration roadmap
Sarah Stewart, Agence France-Presse, Yangon
Southeast Asian finance ministers will meet here Friday to help devise a roadmap for closer economic integration in the region, a task they were charged with at the bloc's summit last November.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) deputy secretary-general Tran Duch Minh said the 10 ministers would review the region's economic and financial situation at the talks to be held Friday and Saturday.
"After the summit in Brunei it is necessary for the various economic sectors, including finance, to have a look at what we should do to follow up the decisions made there," he told AFP.
"And at the last summit we were instructed by the ASEAN leaders to come up with a roadmap for economic integration."
Worapot Manupipatpong, director of ASEAN's finance and surveillance bureau, said the ministers would aim to propel the various finance cooperation initiatives already under way.
They included projects in insurance, capital market development, liberalization of financial services, surveillance and monitoring of capital flows.
He said the "Chiang Mai initiative" to link the international reserves of ASEAN countries with those from China, South Korea and Japan, to provide greater resources in future crises, would also be up for discussion.
The idea is to avoid a repetition of the 1997-98 financial meltdown which ravaged the region, when currencies came under speculative attack amid balance of payment problems.
But the scheme, which proposed that a borrower nation could draw 10 percent of an agreed credit line with future disbursement tied to International Monetary Fund (IMF) supervision, has been dogged by various roadblocks.
"We have achieved quite a lot of progress in various areas," Worapot said, adding that the ministers would set out their achievements at the conclusion of the meeting Saturday.
Tran Duch Minh said that as well as cooperation issues, the ministers would also discuss assistance to the group's lesser developed member countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
ASEAN Secretary-General Rodolfo Severino warned at last year's Brunei summit that Southeast Asia needs greater economic integration to secure a path out of its second economic downturn in four years.
At the meeting, the region's leaders confirmed plans for the world's largest free trade zone with China and began work on a broader bloc taking in its other dialogue partners Japan and South Korea.
The free trade area will cover two billion consumers in a region with a combined gross domestic product of two trillion dollars, and two-way trade of US$1.23 trillion.
The trade agreement highlighted a new urgency by ASEAN, often criticized as a sunset body, to engage China as the world's most populous nation stood on the verge of entry to the World Trade Organization. China joined the WTO in December.
ASEAN's economic ministers are also meeting later this week, in consultations with top U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick to be held in the Thai capital Bangkok.
Following his stay in Thailand, Zoellick is to continue an Asian tour that will also take him to Singapore, Indonesia, China and Japan.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.