ASEAN Business Sentiment Survey 2020-2021

The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 has opened up numerous business opportunities for the regional community with its vision of ASEAN as a single market and production hub characterised by the free flow of goods, services, and investments, as well as a more liberal movement of capital and skills. The AEC Blueprint 2025 characterised by its objectives to create a highly integrated and cohesive economy and nurture a dynamic ASEAN through enhanced connectivity and sectoral cooperation. The blueprint envisaged greater participation of the business community especially the private sector and the community at large that will lead to a resilient and people-oriented ASEAN.  ASEAN has been successful in broadening coverage and reducing limitations on market access through AEC. It is working towards establishment of ASEAN wide attractive investment regime and has been successful in paving the way through various agreements such as CEPT, ATIGA, AFAS and ATISA. Regular pulse checks on the integration efforts are crucial to ensure that the targeted objectives are met on timely fashion as well as identifying challenges that may be a hindrance to achieving the objectives. It is imperative to regularly solicit feedback from all the stakeholders especially the business communities which is the key beneficiary of the AEC efforts.

The ASEAN Secretariat commissioned a survey to gather insights on the AEC implementation from the viewpoints of the ASEAN indigenous enterprises, which forms the backbone of the business ASEAN community. The survey focuses on the services sector, particularly  financial, distribution, and tourism sector.

The survey indicates that:

1. Indigenous enterprises in general have a positive outlook on AEC. They acknowledged the positive impact created through various AEC trade liberalisation initiatives which supported their business growth and performance.
2. Majority of the indigenous enterprises are pleased with the current integration level and opined that they look forward for further enhancement and expansion of the integration initiatives. Additional measures to minimise or eliminate barriers in total that affects the trade-in-services liberalization are in their wish list.
3. Indigenous enterprises are desirous to have better access to the comprehensive information repository of AEC policies and programmes. They are poised to support and increase their regional investment participation if they have better comprehension of the prospects and opportunities to be derived through AEC.
4. Indigenous enterprises in the services sector wish to see more improvement in the standardisation of regulations and procedures. Enterprises from developed AMS have better advantage compared to the less developed AMS.

The survey also recommended a key action plan that needed to be taken to further liberalize the trade-in-services in general across ASEAN.