Singapore and Hong Kong could easily 'harmonise' their financial services, tax structures and labour flows under a bilateral trade deal, a Singapore academic said in Hong Kong yesterday.
Tan Khee Giap, head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Economics Monitoring Unit at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, said Singapore had led the recent push for bilateral trade deals around the region.
Singaporean officials have approached Hong Kong authorities about such a deal, although there has been little official reaction from the SAR.
Mr Tan told a General Chamber of Commerce round-table yesterday that these bilateral deals should be completed between economies at the same level before more ambitious, multilateral agreements - such as proposed free trade agreements between Asean and China; Asean and the United States; and Asean and Japan - were negotiated.
'This kind of approach is more likely to succeed than the multilateral approach,' Mr Tan said.
Earlier trade liberalisation in less developed Asean states, which already suffered political, social and economic uncertainties, would make their 'already fragile economies' even more vulnerable, he said.
As an alternative, more and less developed economies within Asean could band together to make joint promotional drives to Europe and North America to attract foreign direct investment likely to be lost to China after its World Trade Organisation entry.
