JAKARTA: Ten Southeast Asian nations start an ambitious, U.S.-backed experiment on Thursday: integrating their economies in a bid to bring more global sway and prosperity to the region’s 622 million citizens.
Their common market—more than a decade in progress—aims to forge a prominent regional bloc to rival China and Japan out of a hodgepodge of economies ranging from rich-and-open Singapore to emerging Myanmar.
Over time, the countries, all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, plan to boost economic ties by further lowering tariffs and allowing a freer flow of labor, services and capital across a region stretching 3,900 miles between the Pacific and Indian oceans.
The bloc which also includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam is a fast-expanding home to a rising middle class, but also to widespread poverty and income inequality.
The group’s leaders hope their effort, which formally begins Thursday but will still take years to complete, will bring economic well-being to more people in a region where they expect a nearly $2.6 trillion combined economy to almost double by 2030. (Jakarta Times)