Bilaterally negotiating temporary entry
Rahul Sen, Fellow, Regional Economic Studies Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, and
Amarendu Nandy , Research Scholar, Department of Economics, National University of Singapore
The Financial Express
August, 31, 2005

Mode 4, or the Movement of Natural Persons, has been of particular interest for developing countries, since it can capitalise on their labour-intensive services to benefit from international trade in services. Though Mode 4 accounts for a small share (about 1%) of total services trade, export earnings through this mode, particularly remittance flows, have often proved to be of significant magnitude for developing countries.

For India, liberalisation of Mode 4 assumes great importance, particularly in the current positive phase of demographic transition and its competitive advantage in knowledge-based professional services. It has, therefore, been one of the most active members at the WTO regarding negotiations on Mode 4 and has advanced specific proposals for a liberalised regime. However, not much progress has been made on the multilateral platform, due to political, regulatory, and social concerns relating to skilled immigration. India has, therefore, been exploring the bilateral route for this purpose. Its Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (Ceca) with Singapore, effective from August 1, contains separate sections on this issue (Chapter 9 and Annex 9A). This agreement marks a milestone in India’s pursuit of closer economic ties, since the initiation of the ‘Look East’ policy in the early 1990s. At the same time, it unfolds Singapore’s recognition of India as an integral part of any economic integration process in Asia. The aim clearly has been to take the bilateral route to greater economic cooperation—regionally and multilaterally.

Click here to read further : http://www.financialexpress.com/print.php?content_id=100950

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Vision Impaired
Alan Oxley,former, Australian Ambassador, GATT
Tech Central Station, August 22, 2005

China now has global economic muscle. It is sustaining growth in the global economy and its cheap goods are holding inflation at bay. So when China suggests rearranging current agreements or formalizing new ones, people go along, even if it may not be in every party's economic self-interest.

China is pursuing the creation of an East Asian economic community, a free trade area, covering China, Japan, South Korea and the ASEAN countries. This idea, along with a formal summit schedule to make it so, was agreed to when the Leaders of ASEAN met at their Summit in Vientiane, Laos last November.

Why not create a single market in East Asia? These economies are big traders, accounting for just over a quarter of world trade. They also trade a lot with each other. But there is more to creating a free trade area than simply signing an agreement and saying it is so.

Click here to read further : http://www.techcentralstation.com/082105E.html

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ASEAN millennium development
Romeo Austria Reyes, former senior adviser,
ASEAN-UNDP Partnership Facility.
Jakarta Post
August 05, 2005

Drawing inspiration from the global Millennium Development Compact proposed in the 2003 Human Development Report (HDR), participants in a Regional Workshop on "ASEAN Cooperation on Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)" agreed to initiate a process leading to the adoption of an ASEAN Millennium Development Compact (AMDC). The workshop was held in Jakarta on Aug. 1-2, right before the Asia Pacific Ministerial Meeting on MDGs on Aug. 3-5.

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http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20050805.F05

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Rice Misses the ASEAN Regional Forum: Now What?
Dana R. Dillon, Senior Policy Analyst,
The Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation
WebMemo #831
August 1, 2005

The ASEAN Regional Forum was conceived as a meeting to bring together all contending powers in Southeast Asia, great and small, and get them to discuss their security issues at the diplomatic level. The problem with the concept is that there are now 24 participating countries, many with differing ideas of what security issues should be addressed by ARF. The result is that important issues, which are necessarily contentious, are ignored and official ARF pronouncements are no more than milquetoast compromise statements.

For the United States, the principal advantage of ARF was not the host, but the guests. As a venue for furthering U.S. foreign policy interests in Asia, ARF was a great opportunity for Secretaries of State to meet with their counterparts from China, Japan, India, and even North Korea, all in one event. Convenience is a good reason to attend ARF when other venues are not available, but that is hardly an endorsement of ARF itself. The fact that all other major powers dropped out when Rice did demonstrates that they saw ARF the same way.

Click her to read further :
http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm813.cfm

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