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.