Three ways in which businesses can help create single market
ASEAN secretary-general Ong Keng Yong has spelt out three ways in which businesses can help ensure that Asean economic integration works on the ground.
On Tuesday, Asean leaders will endorse a blueprint for an Economic Community aimed at creating a single market of more than half a billion people by 2015.
Mr Ong said that for the vision to be realised, bigger companies can help smaller ones - which might have to tackle increased competition - in their quest to enter the region's markets.
'The small and medium enterprises need guidance and support not from governments alone but also from their bigger commercial corporations,' he said at the opening of the Asean Business and Investment Summit here.
Secondly, the private sector could also boost the modernisation of operations, as some companies in Asean were still 'backward' in their use of technology, he said.
The final area: Advocating laws in each country that do not hamper trade.
Elaborating later, he told reporters that laws were poorly enforced in many Asean countries. Besides the rule of law not being applied to all equally, some legal processes could drag on for long periods.
Such realities would shake investor confidence in pumping money into the region, he pointed out.
And it was urgent for Asean to fix this quickly, to preserve its comparative advantage against big economies like China and India. This was a point that foreign investors from developed nations were also making, said Mr Ong.
'What is it that gives us an edge? We say, actually it's our rule of law. Our legal regime compared to other big countries is quite good. So now (we should) enforce it and get better mileage out of it,' he said.
His view was supported by Mr Yoshichika Terasawa, who heads the Japan External Trade Organisation's Singapore office.
Among other things, the office supports Japanese firms as they seek to invest in the region. And Japanese investment in Asean is on the increase, rising some 38 per cent last year from 2005, said Mr Terasawa.
'So our companies will look forward to any improvements, such as to the legal framework, which will give them easier access to these markets.'
