Foreword

Summary

Both this volume and the workshop that led to it were organized and coordinated by Sanchita Basu Das, lead researcher on economic matters in the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. On this account alone, and on others as well, we should all be grateful to Sanchita.

As conceived and carried out, the workshop revolved around the concept of a “scorecard” tracking the progress of ASEAN's march towards the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Economic Community, which ASEAN has proclaimed itself as intending to achieve by 2015, or three years from the time of the workshop.

I am certainly aware that the ASEAN Secretariat maintains its own scorecard and publishes it as an important portion of its website. However, that scorecard seems to be dominated by things like the number of related ASEAN agreements that member-governments have ratified. Moreover, most of the data are supplied by governments, and what can be published, on the website or otherwise, is determined largely by officials.

Clearly, it is extremely important to know what officials think and what their governments’ policies are. It is even more important to discern ASEAN countries’ aspirations and commitments, which are indicated by the agreements that they conclude, ratify and carry out.

However, building an ASEAN Community, including the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), involves not just governments and officials but also non-government traders and investors and other people. Furthermore, tracking its progress requires the hard work of sorting out the situation on the ground, of determining how far ASEAN has really gone in accomplishing the many purposes that the drafters of the AEC Blueprint set for the Community.

This is what this volume seeks to do, and we hope succeeds in doing.