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Letters: How ASEAN should face CAFTA
I think the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) is a win-win situation for ASEAN
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I
think the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) is a win-win situation for ASEAN. It will help speed the recovery of ASEAN from the global recession. The CAFTA is an important vehicle for trade-led growth and recovery in the ASEAN region with growth of 3.9 percent in 2009 which most likely will increase in 2010.
Furthermore, the launch of a US$10 billion infrastructure investment fund by China to improve roads, railways and airlines and strengthen telecommunication links may help speed the ASEAN recovery.
The world's most populous nation has also committed to a $15 billion credit facility to promote regional integration. ASEAN should take advantage of this and not rely completely on the United States. A US-led ASEAN is dwindling, as the US economy and leadership is in disarray and preoccupied with terrorism and Wall Street corruption, and it seems the US is in a decline as a world leader. Besides, the US economic hegemony is only to dominate the world for its own interests and nothing else.
This is a very selfish foreign and economic policy. Times are changing and regional groupings like the CAFTA, the SCO, the EU, the NAFTA, etc., are more beneficial than so-called globalization.
Under the latter, one crisis, like the one in the US, has a domino effect to the world economy, as we have just seen, whereas under regional groupings, one region that falls into a crisis can be rescued by other regions not affected by it. World trade will be more stable under divided regional groupings and still maintain world trade and investments globally.
While the CAFTA is not perfect, any shortcomings will outweigh its benefits. And, last but not the least, in order to take advantage of the CAFTA and make it work, ASEAN should cut down its bureaucratic red tape in its financial and economic sectors to efficiently speed up trade and investment, and do it with transparency.
Tomas Lasam
Manila
