Asean to discuss regulatory reforms in Jakarta meet

MANILA, Philippines - Top trade officials from ASEAN member states met in Jakarta last week for the 20th Meeting of the High Level Task Force on Economic Integration (HLTF-EI) to discuss measures on regulatory reform and related issues in ASEAN.

The HLTF-EI functions primarily as an advisory body to the economic ministers of the ASEAN. Its primary responsibility is to ensure that the different ASEAN economies are on-track and on-time with the plans and programs intended to achieve the vision of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015.

The AEC envisions a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region with equitable economic development, and a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The high level meeting was the first dialogue on regulatory reform and HLTF members shared general information and experiences in reforming regulatory regimes in telecommunications, transportation, finance, and other services. 

Part of the recommendation of the HLTF to the Economic Ministers is institutionalizing the Annual Regulatory Reform Dialogue or ARRD as an annual forum for regulatory reform discussion with focus on trade, transport facilitation, trade in services, and investment facilitation. They also recommended the development of an ASEAN database on regulatory reform efforts and utilize the ARRD as channel to gather inputs on regulatory reform initiatives.

HLTF also recommended several activities as part of the ASEAN Regulatory Reform Work Program, namely the holding of annual ARRD and thematic ASEAN symposium on regulatory reform as well as developing a knowledge bank of regulatory management tools and benchmarking of best practices.

During the HLTF, experts from the World Bank and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) presented tools that ASEAN members may use in their respective regulatory reform efforts.

ASEAN serves as a hub for the Philippines’ regional trading arrangements. These include the ASEAN China, ASEAN Korea, ASEAN Japan, ASEAN Australia-New Zealand, and ASEAN India trade agreements.