(Re)realising the ASEAN Economic Community (East Asia Forum, 24 August 2017)
As ASEAN turns 50, how much closer is it towards achieving economic integration? The grouping fell short of its target of realising the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the end of 2015, deferring 105 of its 506 measures. ASEAN declared that the AEC had been ‘established’ but not actually realised, and accordingly moved the deadline. A successor called the AEC Blueprint 2025 was adopted at the 27th ASEAN Summit in November 2015. ASEAN’s greatest successes so far have been in tariff reduction. Today, more than 70 per cent of intra-ASEAN trade travels at the most-favoured nation rate of zero. In this way, ASEAN’s greatest achievements may have less to do with what it mandates than with what it promotes indirectly through a longstanding commitment to openness. But achievements in tariff liberalisation have been offset by — and partly driven — the rise in non-tariff impediments to trade, which increased from 1634 to 5975 between 2000 and 2015. ASEAN member countries also have more restrictive services policies in general than almost any other region in the world.