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.