India calls for the formation of an asian economic community

FE Team | Published: September 22, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Sanjay Kumar
India has called for greater economic cooperation with fellow East Asian countries in pursuit of a "truly integrated Asian economy.
Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee underlined the need to understand the "gainful opportunity" offered by the "globalized world" during his first visit to South Korea. After assuming charge of the External Affairs Ministry, Pranab Mukherjee was on a two-day visit to South Korea to discuss a wide range of issues, including promoting India's "Look East Policy".
He said, "An Asian Economic Community that is open, transparent and inclusive, and provides a platform to create ever widening economic opportunities, is a better for Asia and for the world, than a narrower or restrictive definition of Asian economic integration."
Regional groupings like ASEAN and others were pursuing separate goals, and this would not serve the larger economic interests of Asian nations, Indian External Affairs Minister said.
Pranab Mukherjee said that India saw great value in pursuing economic cooperation with fellow East Asians in the pursuit of a truly integrated Asian economy that will draw on the economic potential of India and China, the technology and management expertise of Korea and Japan and the dynamism of ASEAN.
Elaborating further on the need to have an Asian Economic Community, Mukherjee said a community comprising "half of the world's population would be larger than the EU in terms of output, having trade higher than NAFTA and foreign exchange reserves greater than those of the EU and the NAFTA put together".
"The vision of Asian economic integration by coalescing the Free Trade Agreements among the member Asian countries into Asian RTA is the pivotal step towards the integration of Asia into common unit", said Mukherjee.
The essential philosophy of "Look East Policy" is that India must find its destiny by linking itself more and more with its Asian Partners and the rest of the world, Mukherjee said underlying that India's future and best economic interests are served by greater integration with East Asia.
India started engaging East Asia soon after launching it New Economic Policy in 1991. It became a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992, a full dialogue partner of ASEAN during the fifth ASEAN summit in Bangkok in 1995 and a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996.
The country entered into an agreement with Thailand for a free trade area (FTA). This was followed with a similar agreement with Singapore in a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA)
Besides that sub-regional cooperation has accelerated too. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) and the BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation) are indicators to this effect.
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