Executive Summary

There is concern that the slow progress in implementing AEC 2015 may have to be with the ASEAN business community showing little or no interest in ASEAN developments. We conducted a survey to find out whether this concern has empirical support. Our survey was designed to relate ASEAN business firms' awareness of or interest in AEC 2015 to various firm characteristics, their operating environments, and in particular the extent to which they were engaged in ASEAN economic integration.

The survey was conducted in nine ASEAN member states, with a total sample size of 381 firms. They came from over 47 two-digit ISIC (Rev 3) industries, with the majority representing manufacturing and services industries. Most of the questionnaires were filled out by members of senior management at the respondent firms.

A key finding of the survey is that there is a general lack of awareness of AEC 2015 in the ASEAN business community. For example, it is more likely for the respondent firms to be aware of the ASEAN-PRC Free Trade Agreement than of AEC 2015. By relating the likelihood of the firms' awareness of AEC 2015 to their exposure to ASEAN economic integration, we find that the awareness of AEC 2015 increases to the extent to that firms were affected by the regional, cross-border economic activities. In other words, what drives the business community's interest in AEC 2015 is the actual process of economic integration. We can infer from this that the lack of awareness of AEC 2015 in the business community can be attributed to the lack of actual economic integration.

We also examine how ASEAN businesses obtain information regarding the various initiatives of ASEAN economic integration. The most popular source of such information is the internet. But the internet has turned out to be the least effective way of disseminating information regarding ASEAN economic integration by being associated with the lowest level of awareness of AEC 2015. Instead, those that received such information from the government were most likely to be aware of AEC 2015. This clearly suggests that ASEAN governments can do more to communicate the vision of AEC to the ASEAN business community.