Act now or face marginalisation is new mantra

Act now or face marginalisation is new mantra
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BANGKOK, JULY 24: Asean must reverse the perception that it is a `sunset organisation' or risk being marginalised by the global diplomatic and investment community, Singapore Foreign Minister S. Jayakumar said on Monday. Jayakumar also urged the 10-member group to learn to adapt to the advent of globalisation and information technology (IT) so that it would not become a `hollow shell' with no place in the new millennium. In a hard-hitting speech at the opening of a two-day ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting, Jayakumar said the region's recovery since the devastating 1997 crisis had not changed the perception that ASEAN was a dying institution. ``If we continue to be perceived as ineffective, we can be marginalised as our dialogue partners and international investors relegate us to the sidelines. The danger is real,'' he warned. ``The fact that negative perceptions of ASEAN persist is proof that what we have done is not enough. We must be more resolute to put our region back to where it was...the stakes arehigh.''

He noted that ASEAN only accounts for 1.5 per cent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), compared to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum which contributes 56 per cent and the European Union with 30 percent. Major institutions had also given ASEAN nations very poor weightings in their investment indexes. ``These weightages must be taken seriously. They reveal how international investors view Southeast Asia vis-a-vis other parts of Asia. They do influence investment decisions,'' he said. The increased competition that will flow from China's entry into the World Trade Organisation may also divert investors from ASEAN, he added.

Jayakumar said the Bank of International Settlement had reported that several ASEAN economies still had low resistance to a future banking crisis due to high non-performing loans and slow corporate debt restructuring. With foreign investors watching the region's `quality' of recovery, he urged members to push on with reforms and adopt the `best standards of government, transparency, corporate governance and the rule of law'. ``Our national standards must be comparable to international best practices. There must be no backsliding on structural reform,'' he added. Jayakumar said the group must also forge ahead with a plan for a free trade area and to establish an `e-ASEAN' in the IT age.

``We can choose to opt out and allow these forces to flow around us but at the cost of becoming irrelevant... We can either learn to use them or be by-passed in which case we risk being sidelined. ASEAN will then be a hollow shell that cannot keep up with the fast growing new economies of Northeast Asia,'' he said. He urged the grouping to ``redouble efforts to recapture the ground lost'' since the 1997 economic crisis hit.