PLAIN THOUGHTS – Utter lack of public awareness

Outside the gates and walls of a major university in Davao City are rows of tarpaulin trumpeting the “One Vision, One Identity, One Community” motto of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which is set to launch the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the end of December 2015.
The creation of AEC aspires to transform ASEAN by 2020 “into a single market and production base, a highly competitive region, a region of equitable economic development and a region fully integrated into the global economy.”
According to the governments of each member-state, the foregoing “four pillars” are closely linked, “mutually reinforcing to ensure a durable, peaceful, stable and prosperous region.” Each pillar is guided by a blueprint serving as roadmap in the realization AEC.
The university is obviously playing on the motto to attract enrollees in anticipation to AEC realization where areas of cooperation include the recognition of professional qualifications.
AEC has been billed as seventh largest market in the world with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than $2.4 trillion from over 620 million people. With a potential market larger than European Union (EU), it is also touted as having the world’s third largest workforce.
The end of December 2015 is a target date for 100 percent compliance of more than 400 agreed AEC “Blueprint Commitments” aimed to ease tariffs, increase investment flows and open borders across 10 countries: Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
“Like the fabled Y2K bug,” a regional official of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) declared during a recent economic road show in assuring that no drastic changes will happen on January 1, 2016 and that December 31, 2015 is “not actually a day of reckoning.”
In fact, the official argued, the integration process has been taking place over past several years like the easing of tariff lines wherein 99.6 percent of which are already brought down to zero among member-states since 2010. Following the implementation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area, common effective preferential tariff rates are virtually zero for intra-ASEAN trade.
True, ASEAN member states have been making major strides on the road to AEC. But there also remain the daunting challenges within each of the community’s declared “four pillars” including the need to beef up trade facilitation, harmonize standards and regulations, reduce huge disparities in income and levels of development and address the other intricacies of market-driven trade liberalization.
With all its technical complexities, interweaving all the challenges is the need to further engage the private sector—from business community and civil society organizations to faith-based groups and community organizations—in mainstreaming the government-led agenda into the consciousness of every citizen within and across the member countries.
Ordinary people in the streets may not have the slightest idea about AEC or even ASEAN for that matter. Even among the ranks of well-educated, a plethora of questions possibly remains unsettled in their minds: In what way the ten countries with a very diverse culture becomes one identity? How comes a region with wide income disparities and huge development gaps becomes one community?
The poverty condition besetting Cambodia and Myanmar is a stark contrast to the high level of development taking place in Singapore and Brunei. The huge disparities can hardly suits in to the concept of an economic community, however it is put into context.
ASEAN is also comparatively more diverse than any of the world’s regions in terms of economic, political and cultural norms. Not even a single language is cognate and shared by the majority of citizens of the member countries.
Even English, the only working language of ASEAN, is rarely used—much more understood by majority of population—in several member countries. In fact, many people in Cambodia are now investing more to learn Chinese languages in their bid to land employment in the neighboring wealthy China.
Great potentials and benefits may lay ahead the regional economic fusion. But it certainly has its own downsides like the larger picture of globalization.
Unfortunately, in the Philippines, in spite of having an English-speaking population, not much has been known about AEC beyond the confines of academic institutions, the board rooms of corporations and the venues of economic forum or symposium.