Foreword

Summary

The papers compiled in this volume were presented during the ASEAN Roundtable on 29 April 2010 and during a brainstorming session on 23 September 2010 by the ASEAN Studies Centre of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

They examine, from the point of view of each of the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the prospects for achieving an ASEAN Economic community (AEC) by 2015, the target date set by ASEAN itself, and the obstacles in the way of its achievement.

No doubt, when 2015 comes around, whether at its beginning in January or its end in December or sometime in between, ASEAN will proclaim the AEC to have been achieved. In certain ways, it will be right. The AEC, like the two other pillars of the ASEAN Community — the Political-Security and the Socio-Cultural Communities — is a work in progress, and 2015, the year of its supposed achievement, is a mere aspirational goal rather than a hard-and-fast target.

However, the AEC Blueprint, which ASEAN adopted in 2007, contains specific quantifiable measures with clear timelines as milestones in the realization of a “single market and production base”. The question in our minds today, and one that will surely be asked as 2015 approaches and in 2015 itself, is: have these milestones been attained? From the state's perspective, this question can be translated into: Has the required infrastructure been constructed? Have enough human resources been developed? Have the necessary institutions been built and are they operating effectively?

Perhaps more telling and pertinent are the questions pertaining to the business community, whether state-owned enterprises or the private sector. After all, it is business firms and individuals that trade and invest. Does the prospect of an AEC or its progress thus far figure in a firm's trading and investment decisions? Does the firm expect the AEC to lower transaction costs, attract investment, create jobs, increase incomes, increase competition, reduce prices, raise productivity?

Half of the chapters in this volume, which is edited by Sanchita Basu Das, lead economics researcher at the ASEAN Studies Centre, address these questions, albeit tentatively in some respects.