Ex-ASEAN chief says FTAs more useful than WTO for opening up trade+
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[July 17, 2008]

Ex-ASEAN chief says FTAs more useful than WTO for opening up trade+

(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TOKYO, July 17_(Kyodo) _ A former Association of Southeast Asian Nations chief said Thursday Asian economies should rely more on free trade agreements than World Trade Organization talks to more quickly liberalize trade and promote regional economic integration.



At a Tokyo conference, Ong Keng Yong, former secretary general of the 10-member regional group, compared the speed of negotiation under the WTO and FTAs respectively to "slower than tortoise" and "faster than birds" and indicated that FTAs will help ASEAN achieve its goal of establishing an economic community by 2015.

"FTAs are here to stay, the WTO is not going to give us quick results we want, and the globalization is affecting all of us. So what do we do?" Ong asked.



"We have to rely on FTAs to realize trade liberalization and trade facilitation and so on," he said.

Ong, the director of the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore, said the recent proliferation of FTAs globally "actually represents the desire by countries to move faster on trade liberalization."

He said the process of multilateral negotiations under the Geneva-based WTO are based on "the lowest common denominator" and have been slow due to difficulties in balancing the interests of all of its 152 members.

FTAs often work on "the highest common factor" of negotiating countries and the balance of benefits and trade-offs can be more easily achieved, Ong said.

"FTAs allow those who are prepared to run faster. This creates the dynamics for competitive liberalization," he added.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In addition to deepening integration of member economies, the regional bloc has been promoting free trade with its partners -- Japan, South Korea, China, India, Australia and New Zealand, and the European Union.

Copyright ? 2008 Kyodo News International, Inc.

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