BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Sept 14: The formation of a unified East Asia Free Trade Area is still far off despite progress in efforts between regions to cut tariff and non-tariff barriers, economic ministers said on Saturday.

Ministers said their efforts would be geared more toward achieving the broader objective of regional economic integration, rather than on the specific aim of creating a potentially powerful free trade zone.

Comprised of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan and South Korea, East Asia has emerged as an entity under the informal “10 Plus Three” umbrella, holding regular meetings among its leaders and ministers.

Singapore Trade Minister George Yeo said ASEAN cannot enter into an East Asia free trade area because ASEAN would be subsumed by its wealthier neighbours to the east.

This is why ASEAN has taken the tactic of negotiating a separate free trade agreement (FTA) with China and a closer economic partership, with elements of an FTA, with Japan.

Yeo said East Asia accounts for about 80-90 percent of East Asia’s total economy with the remaining 10-20 per cent going to ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

So if ASEAN agrees to a 10 plus three FTA, ASEAN will be marginalised, Yeo said at a news conference here.

That is why it’s long been the wisdom of ASEAN that we deal separately with China, Japan and (South) Korea in order to secure a certain independent position for ourselves, he said.

Furthermore, we’re too small and we’re too nice to be a strategic problem to anybody, so it has always been in our interest to maintain our own separate identity and integrity for maintaining good relations with all our other friends in East Asia.

South Korean Minister of Trade Hwang Doo-yun said it is a little bit too early to kickoff a single East Asia free trade market because of the varying levels of economic development in member states as well as other diversities in the region.

However, we should keep in our mind a picture of this free-trade area in our future vision, he said at the news conference.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung during an East Asia summit in 1998 proposed the formation of an East Asia Vision Group to look into the possibility of such a free trade zone.

An East Asia Study Group, which was formed to study the recommendations of the vision group, is expected to report on its findings during a summit of the leaders of ASEAN as well as China, Japan and South Korea in Cambodia this November.

Hwang said South Korea has commissioned a feasibility study on the possibility of a free trade pact with ASEAN, following the moves by China and Japan which are now in the initial stages of negotiations and have a time frame of 10 years for completion.

So we are closely monitoring these developments in ASEAN countries and also together with the developments (in talks between) China and ASEAN and Japan and ASEAN, he said.

Malaysia, whose Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad several years ago proposed an East Asia Economic Caucus — which has been criticised as a trade bloc — said it was happy the original vision was now taking shape.

Malaysia is indeed very heartened to note the very rapid momentum with which the East Asia entity concept has now evolved, Minister of International Trade and Industry Rafidah Aziz said. But she stressed that a unified free trade zone was still out of the picture.

If along the line FTA is the way to go for the future well, why not. But at the moment we have not yet come to that stage. But at least, East Asia is now an entity by itself that nobody can marginalise or just push aside. —AFP