AEC launch set for delay, ADB warns
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The Philippines and its regional neighbours have made significant strides in breaking down trade barriers and promoting financial integration, despite challenges posed by various economic crises in the last five years.
However the creation of an integrated Asean economic zone by 2015 may still be out of reach, a new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) indicates.
“Asean seeks to create an Asean Economic Community (AEC) by December 2015. Although it has come a long way toward meeting its own targets, it is likely to fall short by the deadline,” the ADB said in its inaugural Asian Economic Integration Report, which it plans to release twice a year. “How close it gets to these targets will depend on the progress of reforms in the next two years.”
The ADB said progress toward the AEC had been steady but slow. It said the region needed to work harder on tackling barriers to trade in economically sensitive sectors such as agriculture, steel and autos.
Countries will also need to reduce non-tariff barriers that are increasingly replacing tariffs as constraints to international trade. Liberalising trade in services and enacting competition policy and intellectual property rights protection – all difficult areas of reform – require national rather than regional action, the bank said.
