ATIGA AND ACIA — IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS FOR BUSINESS

The ATIGA and ACIA are important developments in ASEAN for the business community:

1. • They consolidate many existing agreements thereby providing more coherence and transparency for business;

2. • They have been improved and modernized to address the complex linkages needed for doing business in an integrated market; and

3. • They provide more policy certainty for business by fleshing out how ASEAN intends to build its single market.

THE INFORMATION CHALLENGE

Even though they are not entirely new, the agreements contain a huge amount of information of policy significance to business and it will not be easy for business to absorb this information and assess the new opportunities that can emerge.

It is vital that ASEAN governments, the ASEAN Secretariat and the business community address the information gap very quickly. The gap needs to be filled through better access to information, information that can be understood by business, and socialization of that information.

Some ASEAN countries have built websites specifically for business and they are very helpful. However, not all developing countries in ASEAN have the capacity to duplicate these types of websites and that may not be an effective use of resources for much of the information about ASEAN. Rather, the ASEAN Secretariat should be the information hub of the emerging economic community. It should be provided with sufficient funds and resources to build a single business Web portal that can be supplemented by government and business in individual countries.

ASEAN documents must be translated into a language and format that is useful and practical for business, especially for smaller and medium sized firms who may not be as familiar with analysing formal international agreements.

At present, it is difficult to design socialization programmes for business with information in the current format. And with only six years to go before the AEC is to go into full effect, there is an urgent need for more socialization for business in ASEAN on a significant scale.