East Asia working toward common market
East Asia working toward common market
MANILA (Reuters): East Asia is working on plans for a common
market and later a regional currency to form what could become
the most powerful economic grouping in the world, regional
officials said on Thursday.
The first steps will be taken at the weekend summit in Manila
of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN),
where regional leaders will be joined by the heads of government
of China, Japan and South Korea, they said.
ASEAN is already on track for a free trade area by 2002 and
this could be expanded to the three northern neighbors,
Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon said.
"I think you will see this number expanding not only to China,
South Korea and Japan but perhaps in the near future to North
Korea. Maybe Mongolia might wish to join," Siazon told Reuters
Television.
"I see we will be having first an ASEAN common market, (then)
an East Asia free trade area, an East Asia common market, an East
Asia currency, it is just inevitable."
Siazon however did not give a time-frame for the plans. "In
ASEAN, we keep repeating the process until everyone gets used to
it," he said. "We do not institutionalize it from the beginning."
The finance ministers of ASEAN, which includes Brunei,
Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, were meeting on Thursday to
thrash out the financial implications of a plan for more East
Asia cooperation.
The leaders are likely to announce the program after Sunday's
summit, officials have said.
For ASEAN, desperate to regain the high growth rates which
were blighted by the 1997/98 financial crisis, regional
cooperation has become essential, officials said.
"We have learned from the crisis that we need to stick
together, work out our economic plans together, coordinate with
each other in terms of our financial policies," Siazon said.
Japan is the lynchpin of this plan, he added.
"Japan since 1997 has committed $82 billion to East Asia,"
Siazon said. "This is mind-boggling, especially if you look at it
in terms of what the IMF has provided or the World Bank. It in
effect is the major partner as far as East Asia is concerned."
Officials in Tokyo have said Japan would announce a fresh
program at the summit to help Southeast Asian nations get more
technological training, a key thrust in an effort to build
regional competitiveness in information technology industries.
That is the other main aim of the summit -- to prepare a
regional initiative to promote such industries, which are seen as
the way forward to boosting growth.
On Sunday, the ASEAN leaders -- only nine of them since
Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad will not attend due to general
elections in his country -- will meet executives from global
software and telecommunications companies to further this aim.
The finance ministers meeting also discussed the second report
of the Surveillance Commission, set up by ASEAN to give early
warning of any potential economic crises in future.
However, efforts to agree on a code of conduct to govern
overlapping claims in the South China Sea, a potential security
flashpoint for the region, may not be possible at the summit.
ASEAN officials agreed late on Wednesday to include the
Paracel group of islands in the code in addition to the Spratly
islands but this may be opposed by China later, they said.
China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines
claim part or all of the islands in the South China Sea, which
are believed to be located above vast oil and gas reserves.
"Right now, I am not too optimistic that there is enough time
to have a code of conduct (in this summit)," Siazon said.
"Hopefully it could be settled in the next six months."