BALI, Indonesia, 7 October 2003 — Southeast Asian ministers put the finishing touches yesterday to an action plan to transform the region into a giant free trade zone that will be the centerpiece of this week’s annual summit of leaders.
The leaders looked set to avoid direct criticism of fellow member Myanmar after the junta moved democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi from detention into house arrest.
“We’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for our leaders,” Singapore Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo told reporters after a meeting of trade ministers from ASEAN’s 10 members.
Security was tight on Indonesia’s tropical island of Bali, where a bomb attack killed more than 200 people in October last year.
Troops have been deployed and 13 naval vessels are offshore to protect leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations, together with China, Japan and South Korea, when they meet today and tomorrow to agree on integrating trade. The agreement is “a strategic economic initiative aimed at bolstering the position of Southeast Asia as a competitive place to do business”, ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong has said.
Ong said on Sunday the target date for a free-trade area could be brought forward. Discussion among the leaders would consider accelerating the removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade in a region with 500 million people and annual trade worth $720 billion.
The officials’ focus is nurturing the economic growth of a region rocked in the past few years by a financial crisis, terror attacks and the SARS virus. “We’ve witnessed some positive steps and are encouraged by these steps,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said at a news conference, referring to Myanmar.
A draft of the final communique, Bali Concord II, to be issued by the leaders, underscored the thrust to accelerate economic integration. But it made scant mention of ways to combat terror. It also contained no reference to Suu Kyi’s detention, but officials said mention could be included in a final statement.
How far that would go in reinforcing ASEAN members’ recent readiness to shift from a fundamental principle of not interfering in each other’s domestic affairs was unclear because Myanmar was helping to write the comments.
That non-interference principle was to the fore in the draft communique, especially its fostering of the Indonesian-proposed Security Community, which aims to prevent international conflict but specifically excludes domestic security.
Greater progress looked likely with the group’s stamp of approval for an action plan for an ASEAN Economic Community, which is the brainchild of wealthier members such as Singapore and has a goal of a huge free trade zone by 2020. Long viewed as a talking shop that stresses consensus over confrontation among members as different as tiny, prosperous Singapore and underdeveloped Laos, ASEAN has been held back by the reluctance or inability of some members to follow through on agreed initiatives.
With free trade agreements in the works with China, Japan and India that call for completion by 2017, ASEAN should consider advancing the 2020 deadline by three years, Ong said on Sunday, adding leaders would be asked to reduce non-tariff barriers within two years and to extend manufacturing sector benefits to services.
Indonesia Trade and Industry Minister Rini Suwandi said ASEAN ministers are recommending 11 key economic sectors for accelerated integration by 2010 rather than 2020.
A report ASEAN commissioned from business consultants McKinsey has highlighted lack of integration, non-tariff barriers and disparate policies that favor competitiveness of single nations at the expense of the group as among problems the bloc must face.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Thailand.
