1 - Assessing the Progress and Impediments Towards an ASEAN Economic Community

Summary

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Vision 2020, adopted in December 1997, envisaged “a stable, prosperous and highly competitive ASEAN economic region in which there is a free flow of goods, services, investment and freer flow of capital, equitable economic development and reduced poverty and socioeconomic disparities” by the year 2020. It took a decade for ASEAN to translate its vision into a blueprint. The ASEAN Leaders signed the Declaration of the ASEAN (Bali) Concord II in October 2003 aiming to form an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) as an end goal of its economic integration. In January 2007, the ASEAN Leaders agreed to accelerate the establishment of the AEC to 2015. They adopted the AEC Blueprint in November 2007.

The AEC Blueprint is a binding declaration and stipulates that “each ASEAN Member Country shall abide by and implement the AEC by 2015.” It is organized along the lines of the AEC's four primary objectives: (a) a single market and production base; (b) a highly competitive economic region; (c) a region of equitable economic development; and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy, with 17 “core elements” and 176 “priority actions”, to be undertaken within a Strategic Schedule of four implementation periods (2008–09, 2010–11, 2012–13 and, 2014–15). Ministers concerned from each country and the ASEAN Secretariat were tasked to implement the AEC Blueprint and report regularly on the progress of its implementation to the Council of the AEC.

In the process of its implementation, therefore, ASEAN decided to come up with an AEC scorecard, which is expected to track the implementation of measures and the achievement of milestones committed in the AEC Strategic Schedule. The AEC Scorecard was developed based on similar initiatives such as the EU Internal Market Scorecard.1 It is aimed at identifying specific actions that must be undertaken by ASEAN collectively and its Member States individually to establish AEC by 2015. It should be noted that currently the AEC Scorecard is only a compliance tool and not a mechanism for impact assessment.

Since the Blueprint was adopted, ASEAN Secretariat came out with two official scorecards, one in 2010 and the other in 2012.