ASEAN urged to open up, unite to be attractive

ASEAN urged to open up, unite to be attractive

Agence France-Presse, Putrajaya, Malaysia

Southeast Asian nations must speed up efforts to integrate their economies and liberalise their markets to stay attractive to foreign investors, a business group said on Monday.

Rudy Pesik, chairman of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council, said the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had emerged from the 1997/98 economic crisis on a stronger footing and was working on a series of free trade pacts with China, India, the U.S. and others.

However, it must accelerate steps to ease the movement of goods and capital so that when foreigners "invest in one ASEAN country, it's like investing in the whole region," Pe.usik said.

"ASEAN is now a prima donna, everyone wants to work with us," he told reporters at the start of a two-day council meeting here.

"But we should be prepared to be more competitive vis-a-vis the rest of the world. When foreign investors look at any one country in ASEAN, they will be dealing with 550 million consumers, not only 22 million in Malaysia."

The abolition of tariffs under the ASEAN Free Trade Area, having standard rules of origin for products and visa-free travel in the region would be a boon, he said.

The council, comprising key business leaders, is finalizing recommendations for an integrated and competitive regional economy to be submitted to ASEAN leaders at their summit on Indonesia's Bali island next month, he said.

They include the development of a regional regulatory framework to boost ASEAN's competitiveness, facilitate creation of business partnerships and day-to-day business transactions and operations.

Pesik said there were plans to establish a trading house dubbed "House of ASEAN" in key cities worldwide to profile ASEAN products and boost exports for small- and medium-sized industries.

An ASEAN trade mission is being formed to jointly market the region to other countries and an ASEAN business community will be set up to serve as an "executive club" for networking and trade purposes, he said.

Pesik said ASEAN businesses viewed China as a big market, rather than a threat, and expected potential growth from the creation of a joint free trade area, the world's largest, by 2010.

"It is not possible for China to absorb all the foreign investment. Through cooperation with ASEAN, a lot of FDI will be channelled to the region and still it will not hurt China," he said.

In conjunction with the ASEAN leaders' summit, he said the council would hold a three-day business and investment conference in Bali from October 5 involving some 1,000 participants.

The conference will involve dialogue with government leaders and an exhibition on investment opportunies in the region.

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