For several years now the ASEAN Studies Centre of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies has been working across the ASEAN community to urge and to support initiatives that are designed to move all of the ASEAN communities into a more common foundation. The work to date has produced many successes and has helped to open markets and to encourage continuing work by many people across the entire ASEAN community. As you read through the pages presented in this book you will see many of these successes.

I have been asked to comment briefly on the interest and attention this work has captured among the business sectors in ASEAN and across the region. Unfortunately, I fear that the business community, in many cases, is moving on without the value and the advantages that so many people have worked hard to try and create.

While the ASEAN community has worked to create a common platform for business, businesses themselves are essentially looking for the features and characteristics in a market that will best suit their individual business preferences. And many things have changed in the regional markets over the last years. When the ASEAN Vision 2020 was adopted in 1997, the markets in Asia looked very different to the business community. Most companies were then producing goods to be shipped back to home markets in the West, and only a few regional markets attracted serious sales interest from the global companies.

But Asian markets have now become the hottest markets in the world. Companies from all over the world clamour to capture a strong sales position in key Asian markets. The question of whether the market is in ASEAN or in another part of Asia is important primarily to the degree it provides sales or production opportunities for the businesses. And each business sector will find a different value to a different market. For example, while Indonesia is starting to produce coveted raw materials, China is developing high value customer markets in some of its major cities. Few people expected to see such trends emerge so quickly in Asia.