ASEAN has not only been playing an active role in promoting FTAs in Asia,
but has also been turning itself into an FTA hub in the region. Its diplomatic and
economic significance can be seen in the number of such commercial pacts (as well as
other forms of economic cooperations, such as economic partnership agreements)
that the grouping has either signed, or is still negotiating with major external
economic partners (Chia, 2010). As mentioned, aside from an internal FTA, ASEAN
has entered into numerous FTAs with its external economic partners. Internally, the
ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) was signed on 28 January 1992, and took effect in
2003. The agreement eliminates import duties on all products placed in the so-called
‘normal track’ in the ASEAN-6 countries (including Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand). With the entrance of Vietnam in
1995, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in
1999 into ASEAN, AFTA now comprises the full ten Member States of the grouping.
Thus, the ten AMS have been able to make significant progress in lowering intraregional
tariffs through the AFTA’s Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT)
scheme. To date, up to 99 percent of the products included in the CEPT inclusion list
of the ASEAN-6 have been brought down to the 0-5 percent tariff range, while a
number of initiatives to eliminate non-tariff barriers (NTBs) have also been
undertaken