PHNOM PENH: Southeast Asian trade ministers are to meet in Cambodia this week to speed up the creation of a regional single market and review efforts for free-trade agreements (FTAs) with key partners, officials said.

The “ASEAN economic community” (AEC) is envisioned to be set up by 2020 with a common market of 530 million people, a move seen by analysts as essential if Southeast Asia is to remain an important engine of growth in the next decade.

“This seems to be the biggest ticket in Phnom Penh,” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) spokesman M.C. Abad said, referring to the AEC being a top item in the ministerial talks in the Cambodia capital from September 2 to 5.

Abad said the ministers would consider proposals by a high-level task force set up to flesh out the AEC plan.

The ministers will then agree on a set of recommendations for submission to the ASEAN summit in Bali in October, which is expected to officially launch the AEC, officials said.

“The ultimate goal is to position the entire Southeast Asia as a competitive economic space,” Abad said.

The AEC may take the form of an enlarged free trade area with zero intra-regional tariffs, common external tariffs, and free movement of the other factors of production, such as labour and capital, officials said.

The AEC idea was first broached at a meeting of ASEAN leaders in Cambodia last year after which a task force was set up to study the plan.

ASEAN is already implementing a free trade area in which its senior members — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand — will totally abolish tariffs for intra-regional trade by 2010.

Newer members Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are to dismantle all tariffs 10 years later.

Ninety-nine per cent of tariffs for manufactured products of the senior ASEAN members have been knocked down to between zero and five per cent since AFTA was launched in 1992.

“While aiming and working towards an AEC by 2020, ASEAN would like to see full and effective implementation of its current economic agreements and commitments,” Abad said. —AFP