Letter: Investment in an ASEAN Country

This is a comment on The Jakarta Post online about the article titled “ASEAN in a sweet spot”, published on June 14.

I agree with the chief executive of CIMB Group, the indigenous ASEAN investment bank, Nazir Razak, who talks about an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015. An AEC 2015 would be anticipated by all ASEAN members, because if they failed to anticipate, they would be lost in an open market next time.

The integration of ASEAN will bring winners and losers. Nazir Razak is correct in commenting that the establishment of an AEC by 2015 will result in some real winners, who will be very loud, but also there will be people who will not be happy. We need the political will to carry on with this. It is, after all, the coming together of over 600 million people.

For Indonesia and other ASEAN countries, an AEC faces threats, challenges and opportunities. Some of the threats may include the appearance of economic intelligence espionage, terrorism, dangerous diseases etc. Challenges may include how ASEAN governments can stabilize this region from conflicts, how they can stabilize their own countries and how ASEAN countries can introduce confidence-building measures, cooperation, capacity building and good coordination to tackle or minimize the threats and barriers.

The opportunities include investments that will come to Indonesia if security and political conditions are stable. However, we don’t have much time to prepare the Indonesian people for the AEC by 2015, but a good and brilliant president elected in 2014 could do this job.

Toni Ervianto
South Sentul, West Java.