Asean Studying Economic Integration And Single FTA, Says Minister

From Ahmad Fuad Yahya NUSA DUA (BALI), Nov 21 (Bernama) -- Asean and its dialogue partners are considering enlarging the Asean-East Asia economic integration and the possibility of having a single free trade agreement (FTA) between the region and its trading partners in East Asia. Currently, Asean has individual FTAs, namely the Asean-China FTA (2005), Asean-Korea FTA (2006), Asean-Japan FTA (2009), Asean-India FTA (2010) and the Asean-Australia and Asean-New Zealand FTAs (2010). International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed said to ensure Asean centrality is maintained in the enlargement process, Asean economic ministers have drawn up a set of basic principals in an effort to widen and deepen Asian's relations with its FTA partners. In this context, he said the 19th Asean Summit, which ended Saturday, had endorsed the establishment of the Asean Framework for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and a working plan to establish a template for Asean+1 FTA. The initiative will take into consideration the East Asia Free Trade Area -Asean+3 and the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (Asean+6), he told Malaysian reporters here on Sunday. Mustapa said the summit agreed to accept Japan and China's suggestion to establish three working groups, namely for trade in goods, trade in services and investment to fastrack the integration study. All three working groups will study in detail the modality for the economic integration and FTA partners will be invited to participate in the working groups. The minister said the summit had directed that all three working groups finalise its work on the template and modality before the 21st Asean Summit is held November next year. -- BERNAMA Malaysia