Sanchita Basu Das, ed. Achieving the ASEAN Economic Community 2015: Challenges for Member Countries and Businesses. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxvi+347p.

Abstract

Achieving the ASEAN Economic Community 2015: Challenges for Member Countries and Businesses Sanchita Basu Das, ed. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxvi+347p.The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2015 is the most anticipated economic integration project for the people in ASEAN countries. Despite being a form of state-level cooperation, the inclusion of the private sector in integration is undoubtedly a crucial factor in the implementation of AEC. This book's aim is to examine the progress of the states as they implement soft and hard infrastructures to milestones that were attained over the years and how the private sector responded to these achievements.In the first part of the book the first chapter by Sanchita Basu Das specifically explores ASEAN member countries' challenges including their infrastructure effectiveness to ensure regional inte- gration and the importance of their business sector's involvements in realizing an effective AEC by 2015. The second chapter by Pushpanathan Sundram highlights the future challenges that include integration process management and focuses on the non-implementation of regional com- mitments, and the importance of private sector engagements as drivers of economic integration.The second part of the book examines the readiness and challenges of individual ASEAN member states with regard to the AEC. The chapters show that as the ASEAN economies widely diversify the variation in progress and challenges also become apparent. For example, chapter 4 by Chan Sophal and Larry Strange, chapter 5 by Pradeep Srivastava, and chapter 11 by Vo Tri Thanh highlight the fact that the main problems for the new member countries of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam (CMLV) are domestic ones such as poor capacity for resources mobilization, a lack of private sector coordination and networks, and institution-building. In par- ticular, the importance of the Cross-Border Transport Agreement (CBTA) in Cambodia and Laos on cross border transportation for trade facilitation highlights sub-regional integration issues. On the other hand, the original member countries-with the exception of the smaller ones such as Singapore and Brunei Darussalam-face political and resources mobilization problems. Further- more, both the Philippine and Indonesian governments are under pressure to address governance issues that may hinder gaining advantages from regional integration and additionally we also see that in Malaysia, ethnic policies have hindered state institutional capacities to support economic growth (p. 96).The third part of the book discusses the private sector's readiness for the AEC. This part includes studies drawn from interviews and data analysis of the private sector's perception and demands on AEC implementation. However, this part is insufficient as it only has one chapter on Vietnam, and lacks concrete studies that deal with CMLV countries case studies. Chapter 18 by Vo Tri Thanh and Nguyen Anh Duong shows how the private sector's main problem with AEC is poor information dissemination and knowledge. Interestingly, this problem is also the main issue for original member countries: that ASEAN and member countries' attempts have been insufficient in promoting and accelerating AEC implementation beyond government and academic research. This limited attempt at information dissemination and poor governance of ASEAN as a supra- national institution has been recognized since the implementation of ASEAN Free Trade Agree- ment (AFTA) with the poor performance of Form D. This form is for applications for a lower tariff under the Agreement on the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme for AFTA (Nesadurai 2003; Chandra 2008). The cases in Indonesia and Thailand show that limited dissemi- nation of information on integration processes, tariffs, regulations, and Rules of Origins (ROOs) has undermined the private sector's enthusiasm for AEC. Furthermore, the chapters on the Philippines and Malaysia show how cultural-related business activities have hindered the rate of AEC acceptance and implementation in these respective countries. …