ASEAN: Regional Trends in Economic Integration, Export ... - USITC

The ASEAN Secretariat attributes the rise of intra-ASEAN FDI flows in part to the rising
confidence of ASEAN investors based on shared cultural and geographic similarities, and
expects continued growth in intra-ASEAN FDI flows as integration efforts continue. The
increased share of intra-ASEAN FDI may also reflect the drop in FDI flows from most
developed countries, particularly the EU and the United States, due to the 2008–09 global
financial crisis. 76
Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia received the largest shares of intra-ASEAN
FDI flows in 2008. The largest investors were Singapore and Malaysia, with Singapore
accounting for 57.2 percent of total intra-ASEAN FDI flows that year. 77
Regional Improvements in Trade Facilitation, Logistics
Services, and E-Commerce
USTR specifically requested analysis of the impact of trade facilitation, logistics services,
and e-commerce on regional integration, export competitiveness, and inbound investment
for the six industries analyzed in this report. The following discussion describes selected
developments in these three areas that have affected multiple industries and ASEAN
member countries.
Trade Facilitation
Trade facilitation is “the simplification, standardization, and harmonization of procedures
and associated information flows required to move goods from seller to buyer and to
make payments.” 78 This report distinguishes improvements in trade facilitation from
logistics services by treating the former as reforms to policies and procedures for
importing and exporting, and the latter as discrete services that importers and exporters
pay for in order to move goods from sellers to buyers.
The time and cost required to import and export vary widely among ASEAN members.
The World Bank’s Ease of Trading Across Borders index for 2009 ranked Singapore first
and Laos 168th among 183 countries, with all other ASEAN members falling between
them. 79 While importing and exporting in several of the ASEAN countries—led by
Singapore and Thailand—is generally cheaper, faster, and less complicated than the
average for countries in East Asia and the Pacific, only Singapore consistently
outperforms the wealthy nations in the OECD (table 2.8). 80
76 ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Investment Report 2009, 10–11.
77 Ibid., 11–12.
78 United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, cited in Asian Development
Bank (ADB), Designing and Implementing Trade Facilitation, 2009, 3.
79 There are no data for Burma.
80 World Bank, Doing Business database (accessed April 20, 2010). For its time and cost estimates,
Doing Business uses the hypothetical case of a 20-foot container of non-hazardous products that are not
subject to special phytosanitary or environmental standards.
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