SOUTH Korea is positive on the Asean Economic Community (AEC) that will group the 10 Asean member countries into a single market by the end of next year.
Trade, Investment and Energy Ministry director-general of investment policy Kim Young-sam said South Korea could further strengthen its cooperation with Asean when the AEC materialised.
“We can leverage on the advantages of AEC. As a single channel, it will benefit us,” he told a media conference at the Foreign Investment Week 2014 (FIW), here, last week.
The 10th FIW was hosted by the ministry and organised by the
Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency.
About 300 foreign investors from 22 countries, including companies such as General Electric Aviation, Boeing, Solvay and Goldman Sachs, participated in the FIW.
Kim is optimistic that the establishment of the AEC would provide opportunities for Seoul and Kuala Lumpur to further solidify their relations.
Currently, South Korea has cooperation with Asean under Asean+3 (China, South Korea and Japan), which was established in the late 1990s with the aim to deepen East Asian collaboration in various areas, including energy, transport and information and communication technology.
South Korea has a free trade agreement (FTA) with Singapore and is negotiating an FTA with Vietnam and Indonesia. It is also studying the feasibility of having an FTA with Thailand and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the Trade, Investment and Energy Ministry’s Office of Trans-Pacific Partnership deputy chief, Han-koo Yeo, said AEC would benefit South Korean businesses as it would facilitate their supply chain management in Southeast Asia and likely reduce costs.
This fits in with the expectations of Malaysia, which will hold the Asean chairmanship next year, to see more progress made in non-tariff barriers, the small and medium-enterprise agenda and impactful youth programmes within Asean.
The main aims of AEC are to create a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region, a region of equitable economic development and a region fully-integrated into the global economy. In short, the AEC will transform Asean into a region with free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour and freer flow of capital.
Malaysia has completed more than 80 per cent of the measures set for the integration into the AEC framework, ahead of the region’s average progress of 72.2 per cent.