The building of ASEAN Economic Community
Recently became one of some economic regional organization which adopted a Single Market as a goal, AEC has its own way to create a Single Market with separated characteristics.
In Bali Concord II, the ASEAN Economic Community is described to become a single market and production base to allow goods, services and production factors i.e capital, investment and labor to flow freely within the region in order to achieve upper economic integration level and institutional advancement. The detail steps, however, were not mentioned in this declaration. Instead, “a single and coherent blueprint for advancing the AEC by identifying the characteristics and elements of the AEC by 2015” was submitted and approved in the ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting (AEM) held subsequently in August 2006 in Kuala Lumpur.
ASEAN Free Trade Area
History of ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) started on 28 January 1992 by the signing ceremony of a Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme. According to CEPT Scheme, tariff rates on a large scale of products traded inside the regional border are required to decline to 0 to 5 percent. Since 2003, the ASEAN-6 (the ASEAN-5 plus Brunei) have adopted CEPT‟s Scheme already. Vietnam successfully applied this tariff removal strategy in 2006, followed by Laos and Myanmar in 2008, and Cambodia in 2010. Until now, ASEAN-6 countries are managed to effectively reduce to 0 to 5 percent tariff 99.77% of the CEPT Inclusion List. Further effort in creating a regional free trade area was made in November 1999 when ASEAN Leaders approved the goal of zero tariffs by 2010 for the ASEAN-6 and 2015 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV).