European SMEs Eye Asean As New Export Markets

From Samantha Tan Chiew Ting BRUSSELS, Dec 8 (Bernama) -- Asean is becoming a focus among European companies especially the small and medium enterprises to export their goods and services given the impressive growth rate in the region and plans to form a single market by 2015. Freya Lemcke, Advisor International Affairs at the Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Eurochambres), said interest from the Europeans to access Asean markets was growing amid the advancing regional integration and the region's location as a hub to enter the rest of Asia. "Next year, business initiated via small and medium enterprises with Asean will grow," she told Southeast Asian journalists in conjunction with the trade seminar organised by the European Union's Directorates-General for Trade and co-organised by the European Journalism Centre here from Dec 5 to 7. A survey by Eurochambres shows nearly 70,000 businesses across 25 European countries highlight export markets as the main source of optimism for 2012, a year that will otherwise be characterised by restricted investment, negligible job creation and constrained domestic sales. Lemcke said Europe's business community especially the small and medium companies showed interest to move out even before the debt crisis as they were aware the future of growth was abroad due to the limited growth potential in Europe. However, to tap Asean markets was not easy as they had to comply with different rules and regulations as well as tariff standards, she said. She added that the Asean integration framework had boosted interest among Europe enterprises to venture the Asean market because an integrated market was more interesting for them. Lemcke said European enterprises were increasingly exporting innovative solutions in the services sector like information and communication technology (ICT) and components related to the green energy industry. However, she said, it was always not easy to enter a new market especially with different cultures coupled with concerns about labour, production cost, intellectual property rights, incentive, taxe, transparency, rules and regulations, public procurement and sustainability issues. Eurochambres, established in 1958 as a direct response to the creation of the European Union community, represents over 20 million enterprises in Europe – 93 per cent of which are SMEs – through members in 45 countries and a European network of 2,000 regional and local chambers. -- BERNAMA