Cautious SE-Asian ministers agree to frame trade rules

By BRIAN FALLOW

The Trade Liberalisation Network has welcomed the renewed momentum towards a closer economic partnership between Australia and New Zealand and the 10 members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations.

The Trade Ministers' meeting in Brunei on Saturday reached agreement on an "Afta-CER-CEP" - a mouthful of an acronym - to set up a more formal and structured approach to promoting trade, investment and regional economic integration between the Asean Association and the CER partners.

In practice, it is an agreement to step up bureaucratic work already under way on allowing trade. It includes such things as streamlining customs clearance, exploring the possibility of mutual recognition or harmonisation of standards and other non-tariff barriers to trade.

But the focus at this stage stops short of market access issues like tariffs.

The Trade Liberalisation Network's acting executive director, Phil Lewin, said: "The fact that Afta [the Asean Free Trade Area] and CER are continuing to meet and signing co-operation agreements, however generic, is a very good thing, because it isn't all that long ago that people felt Afta-CER wasn't going anywhere at all."

There was a clear complementarity between the Australasian economies and those of Southeast Asia, Lewin said.

Canberra became enthusiastic about a regional agreement about three years ago, when talk emerged of an "Asean plus three" bloc, linking Southeast Asia with the North Asian powers, China, Japan and Korea.

At the political level the idea gained little traction, in part because of Malaysian opposition, which seems since to have softened. But a work on facilitation issues began.

Meanwhile, the grand vision of Asean plus three seems to have faltered.

Singapore's Trade Minister, George Yeo, said in Brunei that Asean preferred to deal separately with China, Japan and Korea.

A framework agreement for a free trade agreement between Asean and China was signed on Friday.

A spokeswoman for Trade Minister Jim Sutton said few Asean members other than Singapore, " had trade agreements.

"Some have quite vulnerable economies, so they want to ensure they are in a position to take advantage of whatever opportunities will be there later. That requires a lot of capacity building.

"If that requires going slowly, it will go slowly. But it is definitely moving forward."