Japan cool on trade pact with Asean

There is a growing feeling among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that Japan is no longer keen on pursuing an ASEAN-Japan Free Trade Agreement.

Instead, ASEAN members have noticed that Japan is more actively negotiating bilateral FTAs with select ASEAN countries such as Thailand and the Philippines.

Thailand and Japan have already reached an agreement in principle on a Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement (JTEPA), while the Philippines and Japan are also slowly inching toward an agreement.

This was revealed by Trade Undersecretary Elmer C. Hernandez following the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) meeting in Vientiane, Laos which he attended together with Trade and Industry Secretary Peter B. Favila.

The fear, especially of the smaller ASEAN members, is that an ASEAN-Japan FTA may end up just being a patchwork of the bilateral FTAs that Japan is securing with bigger ASEAN members.

Such an agreement may thus neglect the needs of the smaller ASEAN members in which Japan has no special interest to promote or protect.

In fact, during the AEM, no issues concerned with the AJFTA were tabled for discussion.

Multilateral and regional FTAs are especially beneficial to smaller nations who would otherwise not have the ability to negotiate for improved market access to other bigger nations.