Here are some more ASEAN developments from the
past week:
- South Korea and Vietnam are preparing to launch free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations. A feasibility study had been completed last October. Korea wants the bilateral FTA to also include intellectual property, which is not part of the ASEAN-Korea FTA.
- Turkey expects to conclude FTA negotiations with Malaysia by end June. Talks started in May 2010 and have gone through seven rounds of negotiations.
- Indonesian flour mills sued the Indonesian finance ministry for failing to impose an antidumping duty on flour from Turkey. The suit alleges that the ministry has improperly refused to impose the duty, despite a finding of injury caused by dumping from Turkey (NB: I represented Sri Lanka in an earlier stage of this antidumping investigation).
- A major ASEAN business delegation visited Myanmar, including members of the ASEAN Business Club. This follows a high level Australian delegation, as well as a recent visit by Myanmar’s president to Singapore.
Finally, I don’t cover human rights or
political-security issues in this blog normally, but those who are interested
in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration may be interested in this.
