ASEAN sees new common mkt urgency amid EU woes

NUSA DUA (Indonesia), Nov 16 (AFP): The depth of the eurozone crisis and the risk of export markets evaporating is pushing Southeast Asia to speed up creating its potentially huge common market, officials said today. At a summit this week on the Indonesian island of Bali, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will review stuttering progress on an ambitious plan for a common, barrier-free market by 2015. "The impact of the European Union may have an impact on us, so we have to monitor that carefully and take... measures to mitigate whatever downside risks," ASEAN Deputy Secretary-General Sundram Pushpanathan told AFP. "ASEAN will have to focus on its own integration in terms of trading trust. How do we improve trade, how do you invest in each other and not just depend on foreign direct investments." ASEAN, a disparate club of democracies, monarchies and military-backed regimes in various stages of economic development, is still far from being an integrated economy where goods, services and people can move without barriers. The majority of goods within the bloc do move tariff-free, but a recent National University of Singapore study found 81 per cent of businesses surveyed in ASEAN countries did not believe a common market was achievable by 2015.