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Keynote Speech by H.E. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva
at the ASEAN Business Forum 2009,
Crystal Hall, Plaza Athenee Hotel,
Monday, October 26, 2009, 11.20-11.50 hrs.,
"ASEAN: What the Future Holds".
Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It gives me a great pleasure to be here among distinguished ASEAN businessmen and women today. I truly appreciate this opportunity to share with you my views on the future of ASEAN people --a topic which obviously is very much close to all the ASEAN Leaders' hearts at this time as we've just completed the 15th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits in Cha-am and Hua Hin yesterday. I am aware that at this forum, the organisers would like to have more interaction with all ASEAN Leaders, and also our Dialogue Partners. Unfortunately this year, I think due to logistics, it is quite difficult to organise this forum and the Leaders' meeting at the same place. And therefore there are problems in terms of accommodating for the logistical issues. But I can tell you the Secretary-General made every effort to have one of our Dialogue Partners leaders here. Indeed, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was very much interested in coming to address this meeting.
Unfortunately, being a good democratic politician that is, he has to fly out yesterday afternoon to get there to Australia this morning, local time, to attend parliament. I won't say what his preference would be but he knows that he has to get back and that's unfortunate because I know that Secretary-General had very much hope that we could have him here. Nevertheless, I think if you have been following the meetings over the last three days, this is a very important time for the region. And as a chair of ASEAN coming up to the end of the chairmanship, the official time which I actually handle to Vietnam, is actually the end of the year. But this is obviously the last meeting with all the leaders here in Thailand. I could say that the last year and the end of the year, it would have been a year and a half, under Thailand's chairmanship. There have been three major achievements; first, we have delivered and made substantial progress on implementing the Charter after it came to force last December; the second is that, through the very difficult times, we have proven, as a region, to be resilient and also had risen up to the challenges that all the global crisis have posed; and thirdly, that our regional grouping continues to evolve, continues to progress, and continues to be flexible, in our endeavors to meet the challenges of the future.
I should like to expand all these three achievements. First, the implementation of the Charter. As you all know, we are moving towards a community in 2015, it's now less than 2,000 days. And when we talk of the ASEAN Community while, of course, much focus has been on Economic Community. You should be aware that there are three key pillars. Economics is one of them, but the other two are political security, community, and socio-cultural community. I'd like to begin with theses other two pillars first before I move on to the economy, and, of course, to matters directly related to business.
I want to do this because it is my firm belief that if we are truly going to become a community, we have to move beyond trade and investment agreements. We have to build the region where our peoples truly feel that they belong to the community, that they have a faith of their future depends on the working of this community, and that they can truly participate. And in order to do that, they must feel that this community-building effort and what the end of community will bring to them, will mean their security and their prosperity, which is why the work on both the political-security dimension, and also the socio-cultural dimension is absolutely essential for community-building. And I believe that only if the 3 pillars can move forward in parallel, we'll be able to achieve our vision of a community in a sustained manner.
Given the diversity in the region, and if you recall that when ASEAN began, the region was still at war with itself. There is a lot of work to do, but over these last years, I think we also made a substantial progress and laid some strong foundations. First, in term of the organization in itself, we now have far better mechanisms in place to make sure that the running of the organisation will be more rules-based and effective that the ASEAN Charter would truly matter and all the member states, member countries, must truly respect not just the Charter, but all the agreements that we have made. I'm sure the Secretary-General would have told you that we now have the Committee Permanent Representatives. We now have a number of countries appointing ambassadors directly to ASEAN in Jakarta. And we are also setting up a number of new organs, the most recent of which also is the setting up of the ASEAN's Inter-governmental Human Rights Commission. And we are also working towards establishing and organ that will look after the issue of protection of women and children rights, as well as giving a legal personality, immunity to ASEAN itself, and working towards a dispute settlement mechanism also. This means that, perhaps what people felt was, a too informal way of working within ASEAN where there would be talks, with perhaps no clear-cut rules, which may have served in the past, should no longer apply. And that more and more things becoming formalized and becoming more systematic. That is a very significant step; it is the step that all leaders now truly support. We also, during this past year as Chairman, have set the precedent whereby the interaction between the governments of ASEAN, the ASEAN leaders, and the various sectors of society would be a regular fixture for Summit meetings.
We meet the Business Advisory Council, but we also meet the parliamentarians, the representatives of youth, and also civil society. We haven't got it 100% right yet; especially, in working with civil society because some differences remain as to how such a meeting should be organised. But the precedent has been set, and the Prime Minister of Vietnam has kindly agreed that for the next Summit meeting, we will task the Secretariat to make sure that there is even better organisation of these meetings. That shows that now the ASEAN leaders are committed to have all the stakeholders participating in our community-building efforts. So let me now turn directly to the economic community, the economic pillar. And here, I think both the Secretary-General, and also the private sectors, including my chairman of the Trade Representative office, would have told you too, that we are making steady progress. In terms of the reduction of tariff, in terms of investment agreements, these are preceding fairly well. Of course, there are a few outstanding issues concerning some of the member countries, but that's only to be expected of any agreement that's going to liberalise the trade and investment sectors. But these days when the leaders meet, the Secretary-General actually gives out a chart that shows exactly what agreements have been ratified by which country. Unfortunately, it is done in colors as well, and any country that hasn't been able to fulfill its obligations has a very big red bloc. And that's circulated. I think this will continue to put pressure on the leaders and on the governments to make sure that we stick to our commitments. But let me tell you this also---the inability of the member countries or governments to meet these obligations, in a way, is not a decision of governments. What I mean is that I think all governments would certainly like our countries to stick to our obligations, but the pressure that bears upon us to ask for extensions and exemptions basically come from the private sector. Because of private sector feels that it has or it needs more time to adapt. It is still unable to compete, and therefore asked the governments to protect them. Not just the business owners only of course, but thinking about protecting jobs--valid concerns. But my point is, if we really want rapid progress on the liberalisation agenda, the private sector would have to work just as hard as the public sector. But you must know in advanced what commitments are being made, what the timetable is, and have a plan for adjustment. And if such plans require support from the governments, require incentives, require measures, I'm sure that most governments are more than happy to respond to those requests. Because after all, none of the leaders would like to be seen as lagging behind others when we meet to compare notes on how much progress each country is making. Bur I am confident still that issues such as the CEPT should be well in place by the end of the year. I think that there are two, three countries that need to resolve some issues on investment agreement. But in the whole, by next year, we should see free trade and investment among the founding members of ASEAN. But the 5 years after that where we move towards a true economic community, there are so much more to be done. And for me, I have identified that in getting there, what we want to achieve is first, a community of "action" where we can act decisively and promptly to address any challenges that should come along the way. We should be a community of "connectivity" because it is not enough to have zero tariffs. To facilitate trade and investment, we must connect physically and virtually, which means a network of infrastructure, physical infrastructure, as well as deregulation and facilitation measures must be put in place. And, as always, I emphasize that we are building must be a community of "peoples", which mean that we truly look after the well-being of our peoples in the region as we achieve this community in 2015. That's the first area of achievement and my expectation of what to come in the next 5 years. If we can achieve this, it means in 5 years time, we will have a single market of 600 million people, or 600 million consumers. And that's a force to be reckoned with. Maybe half of population of China, but if you take into account the purchasing power and the various complementarities that could be exploited, it would mean that ASEAN as a region, will play a significant role in the global economy as a whole. This bring me to the second achievement that I talked about, that this year despite difficulties and despite the crisis, what this region has once again proved is our resilience and our ability to respond. Maybe we have learned the lessons from 1997, which enables us this time to avoid any kind of financial problems in the region. But most significantly, we see clearly that all the governments are quick to respond to the crisis, putting in place Stimulus Packages, and being able, in the end, to turn the economy around in relatively quickly. And we do that not by looking in, not by closing off, and not by thinking that we would do it alone.
What the region was able to demonstrate also in 2 keys areas suggest that not only are we resilient, but we can provide a model of regional cooperation in difficult times. First, we saw that multilateralisation of the Chiangmai Initiative. All the basic agreements are now in place, some technical issues need to me worked out, and we want to launch it by the end of the year. This is a regional reserve pooling arrangement which now has a pool of 120 billion US dollars, and I think will be kind of a model for other regions to follow, to see that each region can also build for itself something that complements the work of the International Monetary Fund.
The second aspect that I want to draw your attention to is that, while all the leaders in the world express their will of not yielding into protectionism during the crisis, we go one better. We don't just say no to protectionism, but we move on with our agenda of trade agreements with our Dialogue Partners. So the six countries that were here - China, Japan, Korea, India, New Zealand, Australia - all of them now have free trade agreements with ASEAN. And we are still carrying this liberalisation agenda forward. Again, that suggests the region's commitment to free trade. And it means that we are going to be a force to drive forward also for the successful completion of the Doha Round. It's significant because for so long, people felt that ASEAN was often slow to respond to the events of the day. But clearly this year, I can say that we have been a clear model of how a region or regional grouping should respond to global challenges. That I think is a very significant achievement, not just in itself, but also suggests a new era of cooperation in the region.
The third achievement is that ASEAN is not going to be complacent and will continue to look forward. Yesterday we had very frank, open and constructive discussions about the need for an evolving regional architecture. You would have read about suggestions from our Dialogue Partners - whether it's East Asia Community, whether it's the Asia Pacific Community - all these were discussed. And while we may not yet agree as to which format is going to be best, the one thing that was clear - we all have very open minds. And we have accepted the need to have the architecture evolve and that we must continue to move forward. So we agreed that, having completed the free trade agreements with our Dialogue Partners, it is now time to move on to a region-wide free trade area. Now there are two models that have been suggested, the EAFTA (East Asia Free Trade Area) and the Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia. You may see them as competing suggestions, but what the leaders decided was that the feasibility studies have been complete. We are now moving on to seeing how they can be implemented in parallel. Again, that reflects the spirit of open regionalism that has been practiced by ASEAN and our Dialogue Partners. There are also a number of initiatives and a number of projects that have been suggested, that have been launched during the meetings over the last few days. We see clearly that our Dialogue Partners are keen to engage and help drive our agenda forward. So we heard from Japan, China, Korea, the ejection of massive amount of money to help us not just complete the master plan for connectivity, but actually to invest in our infrastructures, as well as making sure that all these investments will be environmentally friendly also. And we see clearly over the last year, that not just the Dialogue Partners in Asia, but the United States and the European Union are also very keen to engage with Asia and with ASEAN. What was most significant in our talks yesterday was that we now know that not only are we expected to recover or to lead the recovery, but we are as a region also expected to be a significant growth centre for the future global economy. And the one thing that we recognised was that to be such a growth centre, we also need a new growth model. We mentioned in maybe simplistic or crude terms that the existing or old growth models were where we produced and the West consumed. That's no longer a viable model. It means we have to strengthen our own markets, we have to bridge the skills gap, and we also have to unleash the potential of freer trade among ourselves. The fact that we recognise all these problems and are beginning to work on these issues suggests that we are making good preparations for the future also.
So what does that all mean for all of us here? It means opportunities, it means potential for the creation of prosperity, not just for business leaders of course, but more significantly for our peoples. But again I would remind you that all these agreements can only put in the framework. All the work that governments do can only create an environment. True prosperity, real expansion of trade really depends on the private sector seizing those opportunities. And set these investments and trade in motion. So your contributions will be the most vital for the future prosperity of the peoples in the region. During my year as chairman, or year and a half as chairman, I think that ASEAN has been able to lay strong foundations now for the Community with the good cooperation and valuable contributions from all our ASEAN friends. We are clear about where we want to go, we have our agenda set and we are getting down to the hard work over the next, now I think 1,800 days, to reach this vision. It only remains for me now to invite all of you to pick up the mantle, seize these opportunities, and make this vision a reality for the future and the peoples of our countries. Thank you very much.
Government Spokesman Bureau
Foreign Relations Division