Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 12 • 1st April 2009

ASEAN to Tackle China Investment Pact, Economic Crisis at April Summit

Do More

Subscribe to Bridges

* required

Email Address: *

Country: *

Employment Sector: *

First Name:

Last Name:

Organisation:

Enter the letters shown above:*

Download this issue

Volume 13 Number 12 PDF • 0.21 MB

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations may soon finalise an investment deal with China, and is working on a similar agreement with South Korea.
The investment agreement with China could be signed at the bloc’s upcoming meeting with the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan, to be held in Thailand from 10-12 April, Lim Chze Cheen of the ASEAN Secretariat told The Jakarta Post last week. The official suggested that negotiations for a similar agreement with South Korea, the third largest economy in Asia, were still in progress. The two investment pacts are meant to supplement free trade agreements that the ten-nation bloc inked with Beijing in 2005 and with Seoul in 2006.

Under the China pact, ASEAN will gain “greater certainty and room, not just from an investment perspective but also in terms of trade,” Cheen said.

Trade between ASEAN members and Beijing has increased an average of 30 percent since 2003, making China the third largest market for ASEAN after Japan and the EU, whereas China’s trade with the Asian alliance ranks fifth after United States, the European Union, Japan and Hong Kong. The new investment pact with China is expected to bring the zero-tariff market into effect in 2010 among ASEAN founding members, and 2015 for remaining members.

Leaders gathering at the April meeting will also address the ongoing economic crisis. Other meeting participants will include UN Secretary General Bank Ki-Moon, heads of state from Australia, India and New Zealand as well as the chiefs of the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Last year the founding members of the Asian alliance validated a new charter for the coalition. Leaders of the group said the document would help the bloc progress toward its ultimate goal of establishing itself as an EU-like integrated community (see http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/36580/).

At a meeting in February, ASEAN refurbished the framework of its secretariat as a part of the project to form an integrated community by 2015. Divided into four separate departments the Secretariat will cover economic, political and security, community and corporate, a social-cultural affairs

The ten members of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

ICTSD Reporting. “ASEAN to ink investment pacts with China, Korea,” Ika Krismantari, The Jakarta Post 2009 March 25. “ASEAN to sign investment deals with China, S Korea” Chinaview.cn, 2009 March 25.