Friday, March 4, 2011

ASEAN's role growing as Asia becomes centre of global economic growth

Asia is now the centre of global economic growth, and this makes the role of ASEAN more critical than ever before, said Dr Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of ASEAN.

He was speaking on Thursday at a session of the "Delhi Dialogue" in the Indian capital, New Delhi.

Dr Surin added that if ASEAN nations face a financial crisis today, its impact will be far worse than the US sub-prime crisis in 2009.

He said: "Before...when we fail, we did not have a negative impact on the global economy.

This time if something happens to this new centre of growth, to this fulcrum of emerging architectures in East Asia, the impact is going to be far reaching, globally felt and globally negative."

The two-day meeting in New Delhi focused on trade between India and the Southeast Asian grouping and was attended by the foreign ministers of India, Thailand and Brunei.

India and ASEAN have set a trade target of US$70 billion by 2012.

ASEAN signed a Free Trade Agreement on goods with India in January last year.

The agreement is expected to expand into the services and investment sectors by next year.

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com

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