Minh: Connectivity is key to Asean's tourism plans

“Asean is in the process of building the Asean Community, and in the process of building this community, connectivity is very crucial,” Asean Secretary General Le Luong Minh stressed. Minh was speaking at a press conference in Vientiane on the sidelines of the Asean Tourism Forum, which ended yesterday. 

“It’s our work programme planning across the spectrum in building the three communities – the political security community, the economic community and the socio-cultural community,” he said. 

“In this process, we have developed a master plan for Asean connectivity. The objective of this plan is to enhance infrastructure connectivity, institutional connectivity and people-to-people connectivity.” Minh explained that connectivity is not only important for building the Asean Community, but is also important for developing tourism cooperation between Asean and its dialogue partners. 

“Within Asean, we have a number of very big projects in fiscal connectivity. We plan to complete the missing links and also improve the quality of the poor sections of the Asean highway network,” he said.  He explained that the missing links of the highway network are mainly in Myanmar and Laos, and these need to be upgraded. 

“We also plan to complete the railway link between Singapore and Kunming in China,” Minh said. 

“We have sections to be completed to link Thailand and Cambodia, and the sections within Cambodia and the section to link Cambodia and Vietnam.” For its part, Laos has decided to proceed with the construction of a US$7 billion (about Bt210 billion) high-speed railway linking Vientiane to the Laos-China border, which will be a key section of the future trans-Asean railway network. 

Construction of the high-speed railway is set to kick off this year, with the project scheduled for completion in 2018, aiming to transform Laos from a landlocked to a land-linked country and attract more foreign investment and boost economic growth. 

Minh said Asean nations have also planned to further develop aviation links, with many important projects underway, such as the open sky initiative and the effort to build Asean into a single aviation market. 

“All these would serve intra-Asean connectivity and also serve as a measure to strengthen our ability to cooperate with our partners in air freedom and tourism cooperation,” Minh said. Asean member states adopted the master plan on Asean connectivity in October 2010, aiming to facilitate economic growth and narrow development gaps by enhancing physical, institutional and people-to-people linkages in the region. 

Despite the socio-economic disparities in the region, Asean has collectively made significant progress through various economic, social and political initiatives to become one of the world’s fastest developing regions. 

The combined population of the 10 member states of Asean is around 600 million, which is continuing to grow. The number of international visitor arrivals to Asean has increased rapidly, rising from around 74 million in 2010 to over 81 million in 2011.