Southeast Asian nations officially launched an EU-inspired economic bloc Thursday aimed at boosting the region’s trading clout and attracting more investment, but analysts said a true single market was still a long way off.
The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) hailed the project as a “milestone” in combining the economic force of a resource-rich and growing market of more than 600 million people.
The vision for the Asean Economic Community (AEC) is a single market with a free flow of goods, capital and skilled labour, which should help the region compete with the likes of China for foreign investment.
The new bloc “will contribute significantly to the region's growth and create developmental opportunities for all,” said Vivian Balakrishnan, the foreign minister of Asean member Singapore.
The AEC will not be raising the curtain on any radical change
But experts say such an idea is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in a region marked by extremes in development levels, democratisation, and institutional capability.
The official launch of the AEC has no practical effect, and diplomats have said Asean - regularly criticised for a lack of concrete achievements - was keen not to miss its own deadline of 2015, set several years ago.