ASEAN ministers agree to push for single market by 2015

MALAYSIA: Southeast Asian economic ministers agreed to push for the creation of a single regional market by 2015, five years ahead of schedule, to avert the loss of foreign investment to China and India.

Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations will discuss plans to fast-forward the establishment of the ambitious European-style ASEAN Economic Community at their December summit in the Philippines.

“We all agreed to recommend to the leaders that we would accelerate to 2015. The issue is how to get there, so now we have to discuss a more in-depth kind of a blueprint,” Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu told reporters.

“In goods, it’s about trade facilitation, and then we have to talk about services and investment, because these are the major components for the acceleration,” he said at regional ministerial talks here.

Despite doubts that the four less-developed ASEAN members — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam — can attain the goal, the bloc’s secretary-general Ong Keng Yong said they had agreed Tuesday to sign up to the initiative.

Kuala Lumpur, Wednesday, AFP