SINGAPORE—Southeast Asian Nations have concluded a landmark agreement on bolstering trade in services in the region, including commitments to reduce discriminatory regulatory barriers and creating a more transparent regime for the services suppliers in the 10 member-state regional bloc.
When implemented, the Association Trade in Services Agreement (Atisa) will make up the third and final part of the “troika” of Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreements that improve the region’s economic and sectoral integration, along with the Asean Trade in Goods Agreement (Atiga) and the Asean Comprehensive Investment Agreement (Acia).
On Tuesday the 17th Asean Economic Community Council held the meeting, chaired by Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Sun Sing.
Chan said the conclusion of Atisa is timely as there is a need for Asean to pay more attention to trade in services, a critical driver growth of economies in the region.
“It is thus imperative the Asean press ahead with the liberalization in services, in tandem with facilitating the seamless movement of goods. The Atisa will broaden and deepen the integration of services sector within Asean and introduce disciplines related to services trade, thereby creating a more liberal, stable and predictable environment for service suppliers of the Asean,” he said in a statement.
More than 50 percent of Asean’s gross domestic product, is accounted for by services.
For the Philippines, the services sector recorded a 6.8-percent growth last year as the Philippine economy grew by 6.7 percent.
The Atisa also builds upon and enhances the Asean Framework Agreement on Services (Afas) by further reducing “beyond-the-border” barriers for service suppliers, creating a more stable and predictable environment for trade in services and setting the stage for future services integration and liberalization in the Asean.
Afas is a legally binding guarantee of the widest preferential services market access into Asean markets to date.
Moreover, the Atisa includes a built-in agenda for Asean member-states to convert their Afas commitments into a negative list approach. This means that all services sectors are considered as liberalized by default.
A state would then list only those sectors or subsectors in which it has taken measures that it considers to run counter to the obligations of agreement. The eventual negative listing approach under the Atisa thus fosters transparency and can potentially improve market access for business and service suppliers.