by Kaisar | Apr 19, 2015 | Services, Technical Reports
Liberalisation in services is fundamental to the realisation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which is planned to be achieved by 2015. ASEAN leaders have taken this firm decision, and services liberalisation and related domestic reforms are to be implemented by then. Hence, the real challenge to achieving the AEC is not one of negotiating trade commitments on “paper” under AFAS, even though this continues with the 8th package under way, but rather ensuring that all ASEAN Member States (AMS) engage in real or “on the ground” liberalisation to remove barriers to services trade in time for the AEC to be in place from 2015. Liberalisation of services trade will require promoting much greater awareness among stakeholders, including officials and especially the private sector, of its significant wider economic gains to all individual AMS and ASEAN as a whole, adoption of an appropriate regulatory environment, strong institutions, supportive infrastructure, and enhanced policy coordination and coherence, especially in the less developed AMS. Substantial key and effective capacity building throughout AMS across a broad and diverse range of relevant areas is needed to achieve the goal. To be successful, any needs assessment of capacity constraints must be approached broadly to include building a domestic consensus amongst stakeholders in favour of liberalisation that recognises the overriding national interest. This includes helping to coalesce interests in favour of trade and investment openness, such as exporters of goods and services, which both depend on accessing efficient service inputs for international competitiveness. A coalescence of interests will become increasingly critical in moving forward to meet AEC goals as more difficult areas of liberalisation are inevitably...
by Kaisar | Apr 19, 2015 | Services, Technical Reports
The achievement of the free flow of skilled labour in ASEAN is a key element of the AEC Blueprint, focusing on managed mobility of facilitated entry for the movement of natural persons engaged in the trade in goods, services and investment. The AEC Blueprint explicitly addresses the need for the free flow of skilled labour. However, although the Blueprint identified four ‘action’ areas for working toward a freer flow of professionals and skilled labour, it does not offer a clear strategy or pathway that can enable cross-agency actions to facilitate this objective. The current situation suggests there are varying degrees of commitment to the liberalisation necessary for paving the way to a freer flow of skilled human resources under ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) across Member States. While the ASEAN sectoral bodies have variously initiated efforts to facilitate the free flow of skilled human resources and AMS have worked toward packages of commitments, a comprehensive overview of the current status of these developments does not exist. Moreover, there is no clear picture of the linkages across the sectoral bodies involved nor yet a plan for addressing problems in an integrated, efficient and effective manner. This study discusses: Identification and assessment of current issues and challenges facing the liberalisation of the free flow of skilled labour across AMS; Identification of issues and options for the work-plans of relevant ASEAN cross-sectoral bodies as an approach for addressing issues and challenges related to the free flow of skilled labour across AMS; and, Indicative recommendations and approaches for AMS to address issues and challenges towards the achievements of the free flow of...
