Talks on for new ASEAN trade bloc

Talks on for new ASEAN trade bloc

BANGKOK (AFP): A plan for ASEAN members to form a free-trade bloc with Australia and New Zealand, to counter competition from China after its entry to the WTO, is gaining support, a report said Thursday.

Thai trade representatives told The Nation newspaper that senior officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their two southern neighbors had discussed the idea.

A taskforce was completing a feasibility study on combining the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations (CER) group, it said.

The two blocs would have a combined population of 543.5 million and Gross Domestic Product of US$2,155 billion.

The proposal is to be taken up at the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Bangkok later this month and at the group's economic ministers' gathering in northern Chiang Mai in October, they said.

"We do not want Australia and New Zealand to be isolated because they might form a trade link with other regions, particularly the United States," Karun Kittistaporn, the head of Thailand's Business Economics Department, told The Nation.

The report said Thai deputy prime minister Supachai Panitchpakdi had tabled the idea last year. The taskforce has met twice, and is to gather again in Siem Reap, Cambodia, next month, it said.