UNDP agrees to give grant worth $5.8 million to ASEAN

UNDP agrees to give grant worth $5.8 million to ASEAN

JAKARTA (JP): The United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
agreed here yesterday to provide US$5.8 million in technical
assistance for trade, investment, environment, technology and
human resource development in ASEAN.

According to documents signed by UNDP's resident
representative in Jakarta, C. Jan Kamp, and Secretary General of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Dato' Ajit
Singh, the grant will be used to finance a five-year cooperation
program, called ASP-5 or ASEAN-UNDP Sub-Regional Program for the
Fifth Cycle.

Singh explained that ASP-5 is divided into five sub-programs
dealing with the liberalization and promotion of trade and
investment, trade and environment, technology, human development
and capacity building.

With the grant, ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, will soon be
implementing the five sub-programs, which Singh described as a
joint effort towards sub-regional cooperation, particularly in
"human development and sustainable economic reform."

He also pointed to the programs' significant link to the ASEAN
movement towards an ASEAN Free Trade Area, which is now applying
the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme.

Kamp meanwhile remarked that the sub-programs "are ambitious
and will require close management and monitoring" to produce the
planned results.

ASEAN and UNDP established dialog relations in 1977 and since
then more than $30 million has been provided by the UN body to
the regional grouping. (17)