India calls for the formation of an Asian Economic Community
Malaysia Sun | Monday 17th September, 2007
India calls for the formation of an Asian Economic Community
(ANI)
By Sanjay Kumar
Seoul (South Korea), Sept. 17 : India today called for greater economic cooperation with fellow East Asian countries in pursuit of a "truly integrated Asian economy.
Addressing a meeting at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee underlined the need to understand the "gainful opportunity" offered by the "globalized world".
"An Asian Economic Community that is open, transparent and inclusive, and provides a platform to create ever widening economic opportunities, is a better for Asia and for the world, than a narrower or restrictive definition of Asian economic integration," said Mukherjee during his first visit to South Korea after assuming charge of the External Affairs Ministry.
He said that regional groupings like ASEAN and others were pursuing separate goals, and this would not serve the larger economic interests of Asian nations.
While accepting that ASEAN is in the "driving seat" and the "nucleus" of economic integrative process, Mukherjee questioned whether such a grouping will "serve regional interests, Korean interests" if it "exclude(s) others whose development is integral to the region as a whole".
Pranab Mukherjee said that India saw great value in pursuing economic cooperation with fellow East Asians in the pursuit of a truly integrated Asian economy that will draw on the economic potential of India and China, the technology and management expertise of Korea and Japan and the dynamism of ASEAN.
Elaborating further on the need to have an Asian Economic Community, Mukherjee said a community comprising "half of the world’s population would be larger than the EU in terms of output, having trade higher than NAFTA and foreign exchange reserves greater than those of the EU and the NAFTA put together".
"The vision of Asian economic integration by coalescing the Free Trade Agreements among the member Asian countries into Asian RTA is the pivotal step towards the integration of Asia into common unit", said Mukherjee.
The External Affairs Minister is on a two day visit to South Korea to discuss a wide range of issues, including promoting India’s "Look East Policy".
"The essential philosophy of our "Look East Policy" is that India must find its destiny by linking itself more and more with its Asian Partners and the rest of the world...India’s future and our best economic interests are served by greater integration with East Asia," underlined Mukherjee.
India started engaging East Asia soon after launching it New Economic Policy in 1991.
It became a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992, a full dialogue partner of ASEAN during the fifth ASEAN summit in Bangkok in 1995 and a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996.
The country entered into an agreement with Thailand for a free trade area (FTA). This was followed with a similar agreement with Singapore in a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA)
Besides that sub-regional cooperation has accelerated too. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) and the BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation) are indicators to this effect.
The deepening of ties is beginning to show in the intra-country trade figures.
India’s trade with ASEAN countries rose from 9.7 thousand million dollars in 2002-2003 to more than 30.64 billion dollars in 2006-07
With deepening ties with East Asian and South East Asian nations, India now wants to engage them on a different plane. It seeks to achieve a "ascending trajectory" of economic growth which hopes to "achieve 10% of sustainable growth in coming years".
