ASEAN needs goals to sway investors - ADB

By Kevin Lim

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Southeast Asian countries looking to create a single regional market should set short-term goals to convince sceptical investors that they can integrate their economies by 2015, the Asian Development Bank said.

Leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are meeting in Singapore this week to sign the blueprint for an ASEAN Economic Community that, when it takes effect in 2015, will create a market with free movement of goods, services, investment and, to a limited extent, labour.

"(Intermediate targets) can be a way to facilitate the road to an ASEAN economic community by 2015," Haruhiko Kuroda, the Asian Development Bank's president, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.

For instance, ASEAN could free up trade and investment among member countries ahead of 2015 and leave more complex issues such as capital controls to a later date, he said.

Kuroda acknowledged that ASEAN's 40-year track record in meeting previous commitments had been poor but said the leaders of the 10-member informal grouping appeared determined to forge an economic union to boost competitiveness in the face of the rise of China and India.

Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, which make up ASEAN, had a combined gross domestic product of more than $1 trillion and a population of 560 million at the end of 2006.

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