SE Asian firms unfamiliar with AEC plan, survey says

Most companies in Southeast Asia are generally not familiar with efforts to establish an Asean Economic Community, but many believe the project is significant.

Based on a survey of companies covered by UBS, only one-third of respondents classified themselves as “familiar” or “very familiar” with the AEC.

When asked about the implementation timeline, none of the respondents believed that a single Asean market and production hub would be established fully by the 2015 deadline.

However, three-fourths of the companies expected the AEC to be established either substantively or partially by then.

Two out of every five respondents consider the AEC as significant” or better while 5 percent said it was “not at all significant.”

“The level of education (about the AEC among companies) remains low, but there is a sense that it matters,” UBS analyst Ian Gisbourne said in a 44 –page report.

Governments have generally done a poor job of educating business about the potential challenges and opportunities under the AEC, Gisbourne said.

“Only 13 percent of respondents to our survey identified government initiatives as their primary source of information,” he added. “This compares with 54 percent that cited media reports as their source of information.”

The survey covered 60 companies representing most industry groups—such as services including telecommunications, property and construction, financial, industrial, agriculture and food, consumer products, retail, resources and transportation—including 14 that are based in the Philippines.

The majority of respondents (55 percent) said the AEC was either “important” or “very important” for their investment planning, but 11 percent said it was “not at all important.”

According to UBS, this may be because only 24 percent of respondents are currently benefiting from the Asean Free Trade Agreement, which covers 99 percent of trade in goods between the six more developed Asean economies—Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei.

Asean also groups Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma) and Vietnam.