It is commonly believed that
the CLMV countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) countries will benefit
the most from the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), with their large labor pool and
reduced operating costs. However, even
the CLMV countries can have the same anxieties as more developed ASEAN members
such as Thailand. See
this from Vietnam News:
Businesses in HCM City are urging
government agencies to create more technical barriers to trade to protect
domestically manufactured goods from foreign competition. Nguyen Quang Anh, chairman of the HCM City Plastics
and Rubber Manufacturers Association, said the country's technical barriers
were inadequate, leaving local industries vulnerable.
Their proposed solution is
to create even more non-tariff barriers (NTBs):
Nguyen Quoc Anh of the HCM City
Enterprises Association said the association would work with government
agencies to promote the establishment of more technical barriers to trade. Over
the last five years, Viet Nam had set up only a few technical barriers to trade,
while global trade expanded greatly, according to Do Duc Chi of the city's
Planning and Investment Department.
Of
course, eliminating existing NTBs, let alone creating new NTBs, is a core
commitment of the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA). Thus these
Vietnamese companies are -- perhaps innocently, perhaps ingeniously -- publicly
articulating that their government adopt new NTBs to protect their domestic
markets.
This is nothing new, and in
fact happens within ASEAN countries all the time. Only in this case, the Vietnamese made their
demands public, rather than in the hushed halls of government ministries.
NTBs can indeed be effective
protective measures. For example, in one
ASEAN-6 country, it can take many months (in some cases exceeding a year) to
qualify a steel shipment for customs clearance.
In another ASEAN-6 country, imports are channeled through a limited
number of ports, with sensitive items subjected to more rigorous customs
checks. In both cases, exporters are
discouraged from shipping goods to those countries.
As
I wrote in the earlier blog post, eliminating NTBs is both a critical and
continuing task for the ASEAN Secretariat to establish a single production base
and single market. Finding NTBs is
difficult enough without ASEAN member states conjuring up even more NTBs, and
not all of them will do us the favor of publicly advocating for them. This task alone will require additional
resources and powers for the ASEAN Secretariat.
