Challenge Of ASEAN Economic Community

      Each of the four pillars (a single market and production base, a competitive economic region, equitable economic development, and integration with the global economy) presents a demanding set of challenges to be met before the AEC can be fully realized. One challenge that cuts across the four pillars is achieving greater engagement with the private sector and the broader community. The AEC may be led by governments, but it cannot succeed without fully engaging business and the public at large. Efforts to prepare the private sector have enjoyed negligible success and public awareness is equally abysmal. This needs to change quickly if the AEC is to make a difference.

      Many of the remaining challenges to realizing the AEC goals are tied to ASEAN’s ability to harness cooperation and commitment, and address the development divide among its members. ASEAN is home to some of the richest (Brunei Darussalam and Singapore) and poorest (Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Myanmar) economies in Asia. Strategies that will narrow the income gap and allow spillovers from richer, more technologically advanced members to least developed countries need to be strengthened and sustained. An important step is to develop modern, high-quality infrastructure that will enhance connectivity within the region. This will create vast opportunities for connecting markets and improving the physical mobility of people, goods, and knowledge within the region. 

    

      Although ASEAN has come a long way toward realizing its goal, the challenges that remain suggest that the AEC will not meet its approaching deadline. Accommodating AEC accords will not be easy when they require changes to domestic laws or even the national constitution. If the AEC is to be more than a display of political solidarity, ASEAN must find a way to give the commitments more teeth. The 2015 deadline should be viewed not as the final destination but as a milestone on the slow and long journey towards the AEC.

Source:

1) East Asia Forum 2014, Four Pillars of the AEC and the Looming Implementation Deadline, viewed 8 July 2015, < http://www.economywatch.com/features/Four-Pillars-of-the-AEC-and-the-Looming-Implementation-Deadline.12-25-14.html>

2) Menon, J. 2014, Moving too slowly towards an ASEAN Economic Community, viewed 8 July 2015, < http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/10/14/moving-too-slowly-towards-an-asean-economic-community/>