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.