The aim of transforming the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) into a global services hub is not only to further expand trade in services and reap the opportunities in global and regional trade in services but ultimately to be one of the useful avenues that will link the economies in the region in realizing the goal of regional integration and eventually the formation of an economic community. The healthcare and medical services, and the creative services were chosen in this study not only because of their potentials for income, employment and foreign exchange earnings generation but more importantly in contributing to regional integration.
A SWOT analysis of the sectors was made to determine their competitiveness. The strengths and weaknesses of the sectors are influenced mainly by internal factors as well as some external factors while opportunities and threats are mostly coming from external factors. Internal factors consist of resources and other characteristics inherent to the firms consisting of human, physical and financial resources, as well as the availability of appropriate technology. External factors, on the other hand, consist of a set of features in the environment where the sectors operate including the external market environment, domestic market environment, presence of supporting industries and the state of infrastructure.