ASEAN Economic Community as an Area of Business Activity: Upgrading Instruments of Competitiveness

P. 96–109.

Kanaev E., Strelnikova I.

Although numerous studies have explored the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), they have fallen short in creating a comprehensive picture of the AEC from the doing business perspective. Consequently, they do not answer the urgent question of whether or not the AEC can incentivize both intra-ASEAN and extra-ASEAN companies to expand their activity in Southeast Asia and eventually contribute to the AEC objectives. Addressing that shortcoming, the paper provides an interdisciplinary account of possibilities and limitations to strengthen business ties across Southeast Asia. As distinguished from the previous research, the study performs an interdisciplinary analysis of the AEC, which offers a new perspective for the long-existing puzzle of ASEAN’s competitiveness and stands for the academic novelty of the paper. In the authors’ view, although ASEAN has notable achievements, among which the AEC as a finalized project of economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region is of special note, the AEC has a long way to go to make Southeast Asia a truly attractive business area. To date, the key tasks, as pivotal directions of the AEC 2015 and the AEC 2025, have not been properly fulfilled. The  multilateral venues of business cooperation operating under the auspices of ASEAN, namely, the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN BAC) and the ASEAN Business Club (ABC), have been unable to move beyond the factors that constrain ASEAN’s policy, while the legal instruments to stimulate business ties are not properly developed in the AEC framework. The authors’ findings and their assessment stand for the originality of the paper.

Keywords: ASEAN

In book

Regions in the Contemporary World: the Global Turbulence and its Impact on Asia

ФИЛИНЪ, 2021.