ASEAN, as mentioned earlier, has been very active in pursuing strategic
economic partnership agreements with its major economic partners. Although making
a large contribution to the economic development of ASEAN, MSMEs have not been
a key consideration in the free trade policy-making of the Association. Given the
already full implementation of five FTAs, and numerous other state-to-state and stateto-
region bilateral FTAs that each of the AMS pursuing with their SEPs, there is little
that the region’s MSMEs can do aside from adjusting themselves to this strategic
economic changes in ASEAN.