ASEAN must start implementing blueprint for economic community: official

MANILA (AFP) - Southeast Asia must immediately implement its blueprint for an integrated economic community if it wants to meet its 2015 target date, ASEAN economic officials were told Friday.

"The time to draft the ASEAN economic community blueprint is done. The time to implement the ASEAN economic community blueprint has now come," said Philippine Trade Secretary Peter Favila.

Favila, chairman of the annual meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economic ministers, said that over the next three days, the ministers gathered here must "tie down all the loose ends so that we can finally package the blueprint."

The roadmap was largely completed and was both comprehensive and flexible enough to "allow us to modify this ... to adjust to the vagaries of the global economy and political landscape."

ASEAN, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has set 2015 as the date for the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), an integrated grouping that will allow the region to compete with Asian giants China and India.

Favila said he hoped the ministers could ask their respective leaders to declare that they were adopting and implementing the blueprint when they meet in a summit in Singapore in November.

He said that the main issue in the blueprint, the "modality in trade for services liberalisation," had finally been resolved. "That means there should hardly be any other major issue to resolve."

Favila said it already contained a number of items that were "do-able" in 2008 although he did not elaborate.

There would be "unintended pockets of bureaucratic red tape" that could slow the implementation of the blueprint, but Favila was confident they could be overcome.

He said the blueprint was "not a magic wand" that would automatically transform ASEAN when 2015 comes but that it would enable the region to "quietly, but firmly enter an area of greater and more equitable prosperity."