U.S. wants faster ASEAN economic integration

U.S. wants faster ASEAN economic integration

Agence-France Presse, Singapore

An influential U.S. business lobby group added its voice Wednesday to calls for Southeast Asian nations to speed up their economic integration process.

The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said it was pleased that the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed at their annual leaders summit in Bali last week to establish a European- style economic community by 2020.

But the council's president, Ernest Bower, urged ASEAN to create the integrated community, which would comprise a free trade area, within as short a time frame as 2010.

"The political statement and commitment that all 10 countries want to move forward with an ASEAN economic community is very significant," Bower told a media briefing Wednesday on U.S. business interests in the region.

"What we would have liked to have seen, frankly, was a little more meat on that skeleton, muscle on that skeleton.

"In other words we would have liked to have seen an ASEAN economic community and heard that it would be put in place by 2010 and we would have liked to have known more details on how it would be implemented."

But Bower said that despite Singapore and Thailand being the only ASEAN members to be in favour of quicker economic integration, he believed the other countries would gradually accept more rapid reforms.

"My strongest feeling... is that ASEAN is going to implement this economic community in a substantial way and I think that it also will speed up the timetable in the next year or so," he said.

Bower said he specifically expected rapid progress on the free trade area and customs harmonisation.

His comments echoed a statement issued by business leaders at the end of the World Economic Forum's East Asia summit here on Tuesday.

"The business community is urging ASEAN's leaders to strive for more rapid economic integration than the 2020 deadline agreed on in Bali," the statement said.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Singapore counterpart, Goh Chok Tong, urged the other ASEAN leaders at the Bali summit to speed up regional economic integration.

Goh wanted the common market target date trimmed to 2015 while the bolder Thaksin proposed a 2012 deadline.

But their calls received little support from the other countries -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.