WHY SOME ASEAN MEMBER STATES OR CHINA ARE NOT IN THE TPPA

Yangon has always been a nice place to come back to. It is a very dynamic city, a melting pot of culture, yet distinctively Burmese. Mosques can be seen on the downtown Yangon although Pagodas are the main religious focus of the mainly Buddhist society. I met one Burmese, sitting next to me in the MH 740, a Burmese, yet a Christian, who spoke highly of Malaysia and the way Malaysia has been conducting itself in the past many years that Malaysia overtook Burma who used to be the richest country in Southeast Asia. Myanmar or Burma will soon be back on its past glory.

Whilst in Yangon I come across statements that why some ASEAN Member States like Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are not in the TPPA. This is not a new issue, just like why are not BRICs countries in the TPPA.

TPPA is a creature of APEC and opens to all APEC economies who is willing to join. It is by way of self invitation when an APEC economy is ready to be involved in the high standard trade agreement, which standard is higher than those in the WTO or the ASEAN Agreements. TPPA started as a P4, which is an agreement between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, all are APEC economies. APEC Leaders agreed that the P4 will be the basis of the TPPA and membership is voluntary. No one will be stopped from joining, as and when they are ready.

However, some ASEAN Member States, i.e. ASEAN-6 are not joining due to their domestic issues.

1. In the case of the Philippines, although they have indicated their interest to join, they have to look into capacity building, and further opening of the county's economies. The Philippines' early membership in TPPA is also subject to some constitutional constraints, which they have to overcome. Yet they are interested and are now preparing themselves for the accession into the agreement. Thus, to say that the Philippines is not interested is not true. Read here: http://cnnphilippines.com/business/2015/11/20/President-Benigno-Aquino-III-Trans-Pacific-Partnership-TPP-membership-PH.html

2. In the case of Thailand,  the constitutional crisis. Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra expressed the desire for Thailand to join TPP negotiations way back in 2012, when she met with President Obama. Read here:  http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-news/bridges/news/thailand-expresses-interest-in-joining-trans-pacific-trade-talks-as-tpp

The rest is history.

3. Indonesia has to work on their domestic economy such as liberalisation of their investment in main and services sector before joining. Yet President Jokowi has also stated his country's interest in joining.

Back to Yangon, the country is slowly moving back to its former glory. The successful general election shows the maturity of the people of Myanmar in embracing democracy.

Have a good week ahead.

Welcome ASEAN Community

Its 1st January 2016 and the ASEAN Community is supposed to be have come into being on 31st December 2015. As expected no headlines mention about ASEAN Community on the 1st January 2016, even though ASEAN has reached a big milestone in the last 27th ASEAN Leaders' Summit in Kuala Lumpur. In fact I was hoping for Malaysia to at least hit the headline by welcoming the ASEAN Community, but none was forthcoming. The ASEAN Leaders should have held a special session on 31st December 2015 to commemorate this important milestone. However, it has been a very quiet day in all the 10 ASEAN Member States as far as the commemoration is concerned.

For those who are interested, and all ASEAN citizens should be interested, ASEAN Community consists of 3 different communities, the ASEAN Political-Security Community; the ASEAN Socio-cultural community and the ASEAN Economic Community. These are three pillars of further cooperation and closer integration of the 10 ASEAN Member States in the next 10 years, especially with the launching of the ASEAN Community 2025 Forging Ahead Together. For those who are interested can obtain a copy of the ASEAN Community 2025 from the ASEAN website www.asean.org.

ASEAN Community  attracts attention from all over the world. In the last ASEAN Community Forum in Berlin the German and the European Union has shown great interest in the progress in the ASEAN Community. In the last ASEAN Economic Integration Forum organised by Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), the World Trade Institute (WTI) and St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, we discussed at length the progress and challenges to the further development of the ASEAN Community.






On 13 January 2016, IKMAS together with the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IDFR) Malaysia will organise the first forum of the year on the ASEAN Community 2025. Let us work together to make ASEAN Community 2025 a success by taking steps towards the implementation of the work plans and the higher level of integration in the 10 member states.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, HAPPY ASEAN COMMUNITY

TPPA the Series

I received some comments that the my previous entry did not discuss the most important topic of interest to many people: the effect of TPPA on public health. There are also other important issues such as the rights of farmers and UPOV 1991, and also Government Procurement, State Owned Enterprises and Investment issues.

These will be discussed in a series of entry within this week.

Please bear with me.

TPPA: BE RATIONAL AND OVERCOME OUR EMOTION: Ovecoming the Fear of the Unknown

Dear All

I have just returned from one of my trips to many developing and least developed economies. My first and second trips to the Federated States of Micronesia thought be a very humbling lesson in life, that a small island country in the middle of the Pacific look forward to overcome their size and distance to be economically competitive. The main disadvantage of Micronesia is the distance and connectivity from the rest of the world, but this does not mean that they are locked out from all what happens in the developed world. They want to be developed and want to be an advanced country. In this trip I managed to visit Nan Madol, the old kingdom of Micronesia that started in the year 500 AD, which shows Micronesia has been having civilisation much earlier than many of the states in the Malay world. This also shows that international trade has been an important part of human civilisation from time immemorial. Another lesson I learnt from my work in the developing world is the "fear of the unknown" which can be overcome by having rational discussions over issues in the mind of the people. We can overcome "the fear of the unknown" if we use our mind instead of our emotion.

This brings us to the biggest of the century: TPPA.

TPPA is a trade agreement between 12 countries in the Pacific region. It opens to all APEC members to accede to it at a later stage if they want to. In fact many countries have indicated their interest to joint as acceding parties.

But Malaysia has the upper hand as we are the original party and we have the advantage of being able to dictate terms to the acceding countries, over and above of what have been agreed upon by the original parties.

In this edition, I will focus on the big picture.

Let us do away with our emotion when discussing this important topic. There are several reasons why TPPA is important for us:

1. We are a trading nation. Our trade is more 100% of our GDP. One may say we will continue trading even without TPPA, yes agreem but at different price and different terms. With tariff has become so low, non-tariff barriers will increase the cost and TPPA's advantage is about reducing the non-tariff barriers among the signatory countries.

2. Linkages between trade and investment. With trade we will be able to increase investment. It does not mean that the economy will die if we do not join TPPA but investors will be looking for better market to invest in, markets that offer more liberalised market access.

3. No colonisation by major corporates. We are talking about trade and investment. Major companies have been investing in Malaysia already even before the TPPA, has there been colonisation? Are we saying that we should not welcome British firms or Portuguese Firms or Japanese firms? We have to strategise our economic approach on how to leverage from the investment by major firms. They bring in capital and innovation that we need to enhance our economy and to enhance our linkages to the global value chain. The Global and regional value chain is important for Malaysia as we cannot ignore the fact we have been a global player and part of the global value chain since the beginning of the history.

I will stop here for a while and will come back with more later today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, even if one objects to the TPPA, please let us have healthy debate by using our rational mind and overcome our emotion.

Have a nice day

The art of public consultation

I have just returned from my monthly trip to Myanmar. Myanmar as a country is taking a multi-pronged approach to develop its country and the economy. Investors from Europe and ASEAN are beginning to see Myanmar as the next stop for their investment. Most investments are mainly in market seeking and extractive industry and hopefully more investment will focus on efficiency seeking sectors soon.

In order to move forward, Myanmar needs state of the art human capital in its state sector, those who can comprehend issues, articulate arguments and put forward Myanmar's interest in the national and international arena.

An area of interest is the public consultation. Despite of, or as a result of the 50 years of closed economy, Myanmar people are keen on public consultation. They would like to actively participate in the policy and law making process in the country. This is a good sign of what to come, with people having the appetite to be in the know. There is lack of apathy as one could see in some ASEAN Member States.

Organisations like the UMFCCI and civil societies are actively taking part in giving their views and opinions in the policy making process. With this in view, Myanmar may move fast, and could overtake some other ASEAN Member States in terms of economic and human capital development. That is the way forward for Myanmar, no rolling back from the Standstill.

Have a good day.

Move to IKMAS

Just a short update about my academic affiliation. I am no longer attached with the Law School of UKM. I am now a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Malaysia and International Studies UKM. 

Happy New Year; Happy New ASEAN

Happy New Year everyone. It has been a while since I write my blog. Since August 2014, many events has taken place and the most important of all is the ASEAN 2015, the year when we are supposed to be celebrating the ASEAN Community 2015.

Many ASEAN Citizens look forward to the ASEAN Community. Nevertheless many ASEAN Citizens are still in the dark over what ASEAN Community 2015 entails. It is not the end of the progress towards achieving ASEAN as an integrated region, which consists of ASEAN Social Political Community or ASEAN Economic Community or ASEAN Security Community.

2015 is only the beginning to complete the building block. Rome was built in one day. Even, the European Union which stated with the Treaty of Rome in 1957 was not built in one day. The Treaty of Rome spelt the beginning of the European Economic Community which then turned into European Community and later the European Union as we know it today. Thus, since 1957, about 57 years ago, the European countries has been building the EU on an economic footing.

One cannot and should not compare the EU with ASEAN. ASEAN has been built on a political footing since the Bangkok Treaty in 1967. The economic issue came at a very much later stage, with the agreement to set-up AFTA in 1991. Thus, we have to give ASEAN a chance to succeed. We have to support the forward looking high-level statement of the Nay Pyi Taw Declaration 2015-2020 as a high level commitment by the ASEAN Leaders to further enhance ASEAN integration.

ASEAN integration will take sometime to bring in a highly prosperous result. ASEAN is a region of 10 countries with various level of development. One must remember even the German integration or unification of two countries with same language and same culture took many years to reach its desired level.

Let us be positive about ASEAN. Let us all support ASEAN and let us be proud to be ASEAN citizen.

Happy New Year. Let us pray that 2015 bring more good news.