The official AEC scorecard is expected to track the implementation of measures and the achievement of milestones committed in the AEC Strategic Schedule. However, the scorecard, in its current form, is too brief and general to be useful for the ASEAN citizens. This book attempts to fill this gap and evaluates the current status of and the progress towards the milestones of the AEC Blueprint. The overall message of the book is that even though ASEAN may miss some of its integration goals by 31 December 2015, it will certainly deliver some of the key initiatives - tariff elimination, establishing the ASEAN Single Window, laying the foundation of the regional investment initiative, advancing tourism services, moving ahead with ASEAN connectivity and the realization of ASEAN+1 free trade agreements. AEC's goal of forming an equitable and competitive regional economy will continue to be a work in progress. AEC 2015 is going to be a historic milestone that will raise ASEAN's profile and will help the region to maintain its centrality in the international community.

This is an important and timely volume: important because ASEAN is an increasingly significant and influential regional and global actor; and timely because, as the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community target approaches, what is needed is a sympathetic yet arms-length survey of the issues and challenges. ASEAN will miss some of the targets laid out in its AEC Blueprint, but the reader is left in no doubt that the ASEAN spirit is alive and well. The editors include a distinguished former Secretary General of ASEAN and the leading academic analyst of ASEAN economic cooperation. They and their co-editors are to be congratulated for soliciting contributions from an outstanding and diverse group of authors, and then adding their highly authoritative commentary and analysis. A must read for anybody seriously interested in ASEAN.

On 28 July 2008, the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Regional Economic Studies Programme, both of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organized a roundtable on The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint. The brainstorming session gathered Southeast Asian experts from the region to discuss the AEC Blueprint, which ASEANs leaders had adopted at their summit meeting in November 2007, and the prospects of any obstacles to its implementation by the target year, 2015. The roundtable started with a progress report on the AEC Blueprint given by S. Pushpanathan, Principal Director of Economic Integration and Finance, ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta. Thereafter, the sessions examined the various aspects of the Blueprint tackling the non-tariff barriers, designing a comprehensive ASEAN Investment Agreement, a regional framework for competition policy, the role of infrastructure development in economic integration, the importance of international production networks in economic integration, etc.

At the Ninth ASEAN Summit in Bali on 7 October 2003, the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to establish an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2020. It is envisaged that the AEC would be a single market and production base, with a free flow of goods and services, investments, capital and skilled labour. An integrated ASEAN with a sizeable market of over 500 million people could become an alternative to China as a regional production base for MNCs. Although there are roadmaps for the fast-track integration of eleven priority sectors, an overall longer-term roadmap needs to be formulated to realize the AEC. This book addresses the main issues.

This book examines successful firms operating within the ASEAN Economic Community, their reasons for success, and their role in regional integration.

"The papers compiled in this volume were presented during the ASEAN Roundtable on 29 April 2010 and during a brainstorming session on 23 September 2010 by the ASEAN Studies Centre of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies"--Foreword.

This volume brings together experts from different world regions. It presents various experiences with building indicator systems for monitoring the implementation of regional economic integration policies such as preferential trade areas, common markets or economic and monetary unions. The volume discusses both the technical and governance aspects of such systems, and best practices. The regional experiences that are covered include: the European Union, Eurasia, ASEAN, the East African Community (EAC), COMESA, CARICOM, the African-Caribbean-Pacific Group, and the Americas. In addition, various chapters discuss cross-cutting methodological challenges related to trade-related indicators.