ASEAN still has trade, investment issues with Japan, India

SIEM REAP, 28 August 2012 (Cambodia Herald) - ASEAN needs to resolve trade and investment issues as it embarks on a regional comprehensive economic partnership, secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan (pictured) says.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual meeting of ASEAN economic ministers, Surin told The Cambodia Herald that such a partnership "will certainly be helpful" to ASEAN.

He said, however, that ASEAN had "left over issues" with its dialogue partners, "particularly Japan in services and in investment and India in services and investment.

"We would like to get on with the negotiations so we can go into the regional architecture, which is expected to be launched at the end of this year, with a clean plate.

"We will do our best in order to finish our left over issues, particularly with the two partners Japan and India."

The former Thai foreign minister said ASEAN was also discussing how to improve the intellectual property environment to promote protection and technology transfers.

"More and more our exports are exported with intellectual property content. We certainly would like to make it competitive, make our region more creative and more innovative," he said.

ASEAN's discussions with the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization this week are "very important," he said.

Surin also highlighted the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises in ASEAN, which he said accounted for an estimated 90 to 95 percent of regional economic activities.

"They are very important in generating employment. They are important in contributing to the GDP. Twenty percent of our exports are from SMEs," he said.

"ASEAN integration will also need SMEs crossing borders to invest in each other. The trade between and among among ourselves is only 25 percent of our total trade. So SMEs certainly can increase that percentage. Their participation and enthusiasm in understanding the process of the economic community development is extremely important."

Regarding the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015, "everything is on course," Surin said. "We will have to accelerate a bit more. So far we have achieved almost 72 or 73 percent of all major instruments we need in order to form the economic community."

But "we also have to go into the actual implementation of these agreements," he said. "That's when all these member states have to look inside and coordinate among their own agencies, work with their own legislatures in order to come up with enabling legislation and translating what ever we have agreed on at the regional level down to the implementation at the member states level.

"There is a challenge there," the secretary general said "That is the challenge in every integration grouping anywhere in the world, translating the regional goals down to national implementation and legislation."