ASEAN to speed up economic integration
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Trade and economic ministers of Southeast Asian countries started a two-day meeting in Yogyakarta on Monday to discuss ways to accelerate economic integration.
The integration would help the 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to compete with neighboring economic giants, China and India.
The informal gathering is a follow-up to last October's ASEAN leaders summit in Bali which endorsed a plan to achieve a single market economy by 2020, with a free flow of goods, services and investments in the region.
But Singapore and Thailand had insisted that the process be accelerated.
Minister of Industry and Trade Rini MS Soewandi said that ASEAN plans to speed up integration in 11 key industries before 2010. The industries are wood, rubber, automotive, textile, electronics, agriculture, information technology, fisheries, health care, air travel and tourism sectors.
"Even though the target is... 2010, we want it to happen sooner than that," Rini was quoted by AFP as saying.
"We see that some sectors could (integrate) faster. We are hopeful that one or two sectors could achieve integration before 2005," she said, declining to give further details.
Officials said, however, that member countries lacked the legal framework to implement such a mechanism.
ASEAN plans to set up a free trade agreement with China by 2010, and with India by 2016.
The ministers will also hold talks on Tuesday with European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy to discuss economic cooperation between the two regions.
The EU has proposed a Trans-Regional EU-ASEAN Trade Initiative as a new mechanism for cooperation.
An EU official said Lamy and ASEAN ministers would talk about resuming stalled negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"They will talk about how to relaunch the talks that... (stalled) in Cancun. I guess they will be talking about agriculture. Even though the EU has already made some proposals on that area, this will be discussed," the official, who declined to be identified, told AFP.
Ministers from WTO member states gathered in Cancun, Mexico, last September to try to revive trade liberalization talks which were launched in Doha, Qatar, in 2001 and which are due to conclude by Jan. 1, 2005. The discussions failed to yield agreements on such issues as eliminating agricultural export subsidies in industrialized nations and proposals to extend the WTO mandate to cross-border investment.