ASEAN told to speed up economic integration

ASEAN told to speed up economic integration

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Tuesday urged
the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to
speed up economic integration to better compete with China and
India.

Abdullah said it was crucial for the region to pool its
resources and create a mass market of half a billion people to
"position ourself in competing with China and India, the two
giants of Asia that are coming up very, very quickly."

He told a two-day economics conference in Kuala Lumpur that
Malaysia did not view China as a threat but more of an
opportunity due to its huge consumer market and as a challenge
for the country to improve its competitiveness.

"A big economy like China is certainly an opportunity for us
if we do not do the same thing that China does in producing goods
cheaply because of the advantage of cheap labor cost," said
Abdullah, who is also finance minister.

"We can find a niche for ourselves by producing quality goods
using high technology. We need to be competitive."

UBS head of Asia-Pacific economics Jonathan Anderson told the
conference that Asia has rebounded strongly after the 1997-98
regional financial crisis but economic integration remained a
huge challenge.

"It is clear that Asia is back on its feet but ASEAN today
remains a distressingly fragmented place. ASEAN needs to compete
as a whole rather than individual states," he said.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The regional grouping hopes to have its own free trade area
beginning 2010 and a European-style single market 10 years later.

It is negotiating with China to create the world's biggest
trade zone and similar plans are in the works with South Korea
and India. -- AFP