Investment officials meet in Manila

Investment officials meet in Manila

MANILA (DPA): Investment officials and business leaders from
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries gathered
in the Philippines yesterday for a two-day meeting aimed at
searching for ways to boost investment flows in the region.

Cesar Bautista, the Philippines' trade and industry secretary,
said the ASEAN Head of Investment Agencies Meeting "will be
instrumental in identifying the many ways for enhancing intra-
and extra-ASEAN flows of foreign direct investments".

In a keynote address at the opening of the conference,
Bautista also said the meeting would help encourage and promote
cooperative ventures and strategic alliances among companies in
ASEAN, doubling or tripling investment flows by the turn of the
century.

"There are still so many avenues we have to explore towards
expanding and upgrading intra-ASEAN relations in trade,
investments, industrial and technical cooperation, and human
resource training and manpower exchange that will mutually
benefit our respective economies," Bautista said.

Bautista urged the delegates to focus on attracting investment
into specific industrial sectors in the region during their
closed-door discussions, instead of the prevailing strategy of
promoting individual countries.

"This also will bring to the fore the still relatively
untapped potential for ASEAN complementarity and various
opportunities for complementation among ASEAN industrial
sectors," he said.

From the Philippines' experience, investment from ASEAN
neighbors has improved remarkably since the period of 1986-1990,
when foreign capital from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and
Indonesia accounted for only 3.7 per cent of total Asian
investment in the country.

In the period of 1991-1996, ASEAN's share in investment in the
Philippines surged to 31 per cent or 22 billion pesos (US$833
million) of the total Asian investment of 71.2 billion pesos
($2.7 billion).

ASEAN now includes Vietnam, while the group has decided to
accept as members Burma, Cambodia and Laos by July.