Malaysia says ASEAN needs to address non-tariff barriers

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb. 5 (Chinese media) -- ASEAN needs to reduce or eliminate other

forms of non-tariff barriers to retain its attractiveness to major trading

partners and investor nations, particularly the three East Asian countries,

Malaysia's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said here on

Thursday.

These non-tariff barriers or obstacles to trade are marginalizing the gains

to ASEAN in duty elimination and incentives offered to investors, the ministry

said in a statement.

"It is imperative ASEAN member states implement their commitments to reduce

and eliminate import duties, open up their services and investment sectors,

harmonize regulatory and registration processes and other measures. The

implementation of these commitments would help the region's economic integration

as outlined in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint," it said.

The implementation of the commitments would also enable businesses within

the region to expand intra-ASEAN trade and investment flows, the ministry said.

ASEAN should also accelerate its services liberalization in order to stay

credible and to increase its draw of foreign direct investment (FDI), MITI said.

The current pace of progressive liberalization is not fast enough, as

services need to catch up as an enabler to facilitate the speedy movement of

goods across borders, the ministry said.

"The opening up of intra-ASEAN trade in services provides tremendous

business opportunities for ASEAN's services providers. Malaysian companies are

already taking advantage of the liberalization in sectors such as construction,

healthcare, tourism and education," it said.

In addition to regional integration initiatives, MITI said the

implementation of the ASEAN-China, ASEAN-South Korea, ASEAN-Japan free trade

agreement (FTA) and the soon to be implemented FTA with India, Australia and New

Zealand provides the perfect complement to regional integration initiatives by

working towards making ASEAN an attractive location for FDI inflows, and

offering a wide regional market for its members and other trading partners.

In 2007, the intra-ASEAN investment stood at 8.2 billion U.S. dollars. The

inflow of FDI also saw expansion in ASEAN's global trade to 1.6 trillion U.S.

dollars in 2007.

Intra-ASEAN trade, which on average comprises one quarter of annual total

ASEAN trade, increased from 352.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2006 to 404.3 billion

U.S. dollars in 2007 translating to a 14.6 percent growth.