Small Enterprises in ASEAN: Need for regional co-operation

Abstract

Most conspicuously missing from the list of ASEAN co-operation programmes and institu tions to date is a programme for co-operation in the development of small enterprises and an institutional mechanism to encourage such co operation. No doubt suggestions for such co operation might have been made at the numer ous meetings of the Committee on Industry, Minerals and Energy (COIME), but for vari ous reasons these suggestions have neither been seriously considered nor adopted. Thus one finds that, although ASEAN co-operation has been instituted in various schemes and organizations, there is still no form of co operation in the development of small enter prises. Consequently, the outside observer may be pardoned for thinking that small enter prises are an insignificant element in the ASEAN economies or that such enterprises do not have any vital role to play in ASEAN economic co-operation. The truth is just the reverse. In fact, the major objective of this paper is to highlight the extent and importance of small enterprises in the ASEAN region and to explain how closer ASEAN co-operation can help to promote these enterprises for the benefit of the ASEAN economies. This paper will also examine some of the constraints facing ASEAN small enterprises and conclude with a plea for the establishment of an ASEAN Small Enterprise Centre to provide them with assis tance. The scope of discussion in this paper will cover the ASEAN countries, with the excep tion of Brunei because there is no known study of small enterprises in that country. Further more, the discussion will be confined to small enterprises in the manufacturing sector, be cause non-manufacturing small enterprises are quite different in their characteristics and prob lems. Moreover, the manufacturing sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the ASEAN region, and all the ASEAN countries aspire to become industrialized by the year 2000.