These are the heart of the ASEAN Economic Community for which a mindset change of stakeholders is needed to face the end- 2015 economic integration deadline; these include politicians who have to implement agreements committed and signed by the government, business leaders who ask for protection and preferential treatment instead of proactively addressing long-term problems, and the general public who must wage a continuous battle against corruption and inefficiency.
Fears over changing comparative advantages, bad environments of doing business, more complex and chaotic global conditions, etc. must be balanced by careful exploitation of opportunities. The Philippines has its own strengths going into AEC 2015