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JAKARTA, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Secretary General of the Association of the Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Surin Pitsuwan said that the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) effective in Jan. 2010 has been resulting in significant increase of trade and investment.
"While it's still too early to assess the impact of ACFTA in both China and ASEAN, the economic potential in terms of expanding trade and investment opportunities can be huge," Surin told Xinhua recently.
He said that according to China's statistics, in the first eight months of 2010, bilateral trade between China and ASEAN reached 185.4 billion U.S. dollars, or 47 percent higher than the volume for the same period last year.
Meanwhile, he said, by end-June 2010, cumulative investment of ASEAN in China was about 59.8 billion dollars, while China's non- financial investment in ASEAN was 9.6 billion dollars.
According to Surin, the region holds vast opportunities for businesses in the same industry to collaborate and complement rather than compete with each other.
"The ACFTA has the largest consumer market size of 1.9 billion consumers and combined GDP 6.4 trillion dollars as of 2009," he said.
According to Pitsuwan, China and ASEAN have diverse resources, skills, strengths and talents that could be shared and developed into core competencies and capabilities for domestic businesses to thrive in the regional and global market.
"ACFTA serves as a platform for businesses, including those outside the ACFTA, to tap into these opportunities," he said.
He also said that a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) further supported that China and ASEAN are more integrated with one another than China is with the rest of the world.
"Statistical data indicates that more than half of the top ten products traded between China and ASEAN are also major export and import items. The report further shows that with ACFTA, trade is likely to be created than diverted, which augurs well for ASEAN-China trade and investment relations," he said.
Editor: Xiong Tong
Source: English.news.cn
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