Stronger economic ties a priority for ASEAN: PM Lee

KUALA LUMPUR — Deepening economic cooperation, widening collaboration to new areas such as disaster management and strengthening the organisation and Secretariat of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) are three areas the regional pact should focus on post-2015 after its ambitious efforts to establish an ASEAN community, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

ASEAN has set itself an ambitious target of becoming an integrated community by Dec 31. With eight more months to go before the deadline, Mr Lee said it was important to give integration efforts “a strong push over the finish line”. To do so, Mr Lee urged the grouping to focus on three priorities from now till the end of the year.

The first is to ensure greater services liberalisation, he said at the closed-door plenary session of the 26th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning.

“We are already negotiating our tenth and final ASEAN Framework Agreement for Services Package,” he said. “And yet many of us still find it hard to get our service sectors to liberalise, to the degree that has already been agreed. So we must press on to implement what we have committed together.”

The second is to ratify the ASEAN open skies agreement to improve air linkages in the region.

The third is to aim for a high-quality Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is a proposed free trade agreement between ASEAN and key dialogue partners Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

“Negotiations have been slow so far,” Mr Lee said. “ASEAN has to show leadership and aim for a high-quality agreement rather than set ourselves a low bar.”

Mr Lee also spoke on the ASEAN Community’s post-2015 vision, saying that the grouping should strengthen economic cooperation by tackling more challenging issues such as non-tariff barriers to trade. ASEAN should also expand cooperation to new areas such as disaster management, regional nuclear safety and transboundary pollution, he said.

“While growth is important, we must also grow sustainably; because otherwise the lives and the health of our citizens will be affected. One such sustainable growth issue is transboundary haze pollution,” said Mr Lee, who welcomed President Joko Widodo’s commitment to tackle forest fires in Indonesia.

Mr Lee noted that all 10 ASEAN member states have ratified the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, which shows that they recognise the issue’s importance.

“Next step is for us to operationalise the Haze Monitoring System and develop more cooperative projects together,” added Mr Lee, referring to the system that uses hot-spot data and satellite images to pinpoint illegal forest burning activities.

Mr Lee added that efforts should also be made to strengthen the ASEAN Secretariat.

“Our common objective is to make ASEAN processes more efficient, so that we will have more time for meaningful discussions,” he said, as he voiced support for the proposal to reduce the number of summit meetings from two to one every year, as part of overall efforts to make ASEAN a more efficient organisation.

The theme for the ASEAN summit, which is chaired by Malaysia, is “Our People, Our Community, Our Vision”.

In his opening address for the summit meeting, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said: “A people-centred ASEAN is one in which our citizens feel that they are not just part of ASEAN. But that regardless of who they are — from rice farmers, to forex dealers, halal business owners, fishermen and electronics engineers — our citizens actually feel that they are ASEAN, and its future is their future.”