Today we have another
edition of “ASEAN Around the Horn,” a recap of developments I didn’t cover in
other posts:
1. The
ASEAN Economic Ministers held their retreat February 26-27 in Singapore. On the ASEAN Economic Community, the
ministers stated as follows:
"The Ministers discussed and agreed on the priorities of the ASEAN
Economic Community (AEC) in 2014, which include raising awareness on the AEC;
operationalising the ASEAN Framework for Equitable Economic Development;
strengthening regional cooperation for SME development; and developing a
regional framework for public-private partnership. Several agreements and
protocols which would further deepen market integration, particularly in easing
the flow of services, as well as services and investment agreements with Japan
and India, are also targeted to be signed within this year."
And on the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) talks the ministers stated:
"The Ministers noted the good progress made in the ongoing negotiations
of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Since the
negotiations on the RCEP commenced in May 2013, three rounds of negotiations
have been completed. Participating countries continued to deepen their detailed
and technical work on trade in goods, trade in services and investment in the
relevant Working Groups. Work has also begun in other areas with the recent
creation of Working Groups on intellectual property, competition, economic and
technical cooperation, and dispute settlement. The Ministers agreed on the
importance of maintaining the negotiating momentum to ensure the successful
negotiation of the RCEP by the end of 2015."
I will have a more detailed
post on the Retreat when I get more information.
2. Indonesia
took another step towards ratifying the ASEAN Agreement on
Trans-boundary Haze Pollution. Legislators representing almost 65% of the
Indonesian parliament agreed to support passage of the Agreement. Only the
opposition the PDI-P and PKS parties oppose the Agreement as an infringement of
Indonesian sovereignty. Indonesia hopes
to have the Agreement ratified before the next ASEAN haze meeting in April.
3. The ASEAN Alliance of Health
Supplement Associations (AAHSA) and the International Alliance of Dietary/ Food
Supplement Associations (IADSA) have jointly issued an
ASEAN TMHS (Traditional Medicines and Health Supplements) Scorecard,
which purports to be first of its kind developed by an industry in the region:
"The Scorecard affirms
the significant progress ASEAN has achieved in the harmonisation with 9 out of
the 14 standards and technical requirements being completed since 2004 in the areas
of labelling, composition, quality, safety, and product placement. The
Scorecard also shows that the TMHS harmonisation is reaching the goal of
building the ASEAN Single Market in this sector as most of the measures
identified for harmonisation have met the 50% threshold for completion with a
few remaining to be completed by the end of 2015. The majority of the companies
involved in the health supplements industry, including the small and medium
enterprises will eventually be able to achieve the harmonised standards and
technical requirements."
"The scorecard
indicates that ASEAN would need to work swiftly to complete the remaining
measures. A number of measures remain in progress or on hold due to the lack of
consensus on how to tackle them. The health supplement sector feels strongly
that any exceptions from the ASEAN requirements, such as on labelling, will
impede the free flow of health supplement products across the region, and
believes ways should be found to remove these exceptions."
4. India
supposedly has completed the domestic ratification procedures for signing the services
chapter of the ASEAN-India FTA. This
has been reported many times previously, the services chapter seems more likely
to reach fruition this year.
5. The UN warned that greater
regional integration in ASEAN could also benefit the narcotics trade unless
ASEAN member states improve their criminal justice and public health
infrastructure.
6. Seafood producers plan to
issue a
harmonized ASEAN industry standard for shrimp. This is to help ASEAN shrimp producers deal
importation issues arising in major markets such as the EU and the US.
