The ASEAN community is in the final stages of completing its integration and by end 2015 the AEC (ASEAN Economic Community) will be formed.
The AEC is an initiative to transform the region into an area with free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour and a free flow of capital. The four main goals of the AEC are: to establish a single market and production base; a competitive economic region; equitable economic development as an integral part of the region and integration into the global economy.
Last year an ASEAN-BAC (ASEAN Business Advisory Council) Survey into ASEAN competitiveness found there were growing signs that more businesses were adapting an ‘ASEAN strategy’ in their approach to expansion, marketing and branding and 94% of businesses planned to invest or increase investments in an ASEAN country over the next three years. The main reason for investing in ASEAN countries, as identified by the largest share of businesses, was to ‘access a new or growing market’ a good indicator of business optimism in the growth prospects of the region.
However, there is still plenty of work to be done in mentoring businesses through this period of immense economic and regulatory change to ensure the impact is a positive one.
ASEAN Deputy Secretary General, Dr. Lim Hong Hin, will host an in-cosmetics Asia Workshop, where he will explain why the formation of the AEC is important for your business. With harmonisation due to be complete at the end of 2015, this will be a timely debate that will highlight how the industry can take advantage of reduced tariffs and abolished technical barriers to trade, while also cover issues surrounding deviation from the agreement and solutions to combat this.
I will also be explaining how different regulatory models are prevalent in countries across Asia: from one product category to four different categories, from simple notifications to long and tedious registrations, from freedom to choose ingredients to positive lists of ingredients one must use, from liberal claims to mandatory lists of claims, plus my presentation will give an overview of the different systems focusing on the newly introduced amendments.
Alain Khaiat (Seers Consulting) will be presenting ‘Regulations in Asia from China to Japan, Korea, ASEAN’ as part of in-cosmetic Asia’s Marketing Trends programme at 11:00 – 12:00 on Thursday, 6th November. He will also be chairing a presentation on ‘ASEAN 2015 Economic Community: Opportunities and Challenges’ at 16:00 – 16:45 on Wednesday, 5th November at the show.