Dialogue between FJCCIA and ASEAN Secretary-General

June 2016

On June 20, the 9th Dialogue of the Federation of Japanese Chambers of Commerce and Industry in ASEAN (FJCCIA*) with the ASEAN Secretary-General was held in Jakarta, Indonesia. JETRO President Yasushi Akahoshi was there to take part in the dialogue along with each representative from FJCCIA.
* FJCCIA is composed of 10 Japanese Chambers of Commerce and Industry in the nine countries from the ASEAN excluding Brunei. The number of member companies is 6,914 as of June in 2016.

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which started at the end of 2015, has been working to realize the vision of “ASEAN 2025” aiming at further promoting liberalization and close collaboration between member countries. To help realize this goal of the AEC, FJCCIA gathered information on specific issues which Japanese companies face when entering the markets of each ASEAN country, and submitted them under the title “Requests from the Japanese Business Community in ASEAN” to the ASEAN Secretary-General.

In addition, three chairpersons from the following committees were also invited: the Coordinating Committee on ATIGA (CCA); the Coordinating Committee on Customs (CCC); and the ASEAN Consultative Committee for Standards and Quality (ACCSQ). These committees belong to sectoral committees which are responsible for formulating plans for integrated actions in line with the AEC’s blueprint. Beginning this year, separate meetings were also held for them as a new framework within the dialogue.

Topics of suggestions by FJCCIA (revised for 2016 - 2018)

  1. Facilitating trade
  2. Streamlining and conciliating standards and certifications
  3. Promoting trade in services
  4. Promoting monetary integration
  5. Increasing mobility of skilled workers and business persons
  6. Creating competition policies
  7. Coordinating tax systems
  8. Enhancing intellectual property rights protection
  9. Developing infrastructure
  10. Improving conditions of energy and environment
  11. Supporting SMEs
  12. Globalization of ASEAN

Achievements and issues toward integration of AEC (Announcement at press conference by Secretary-General Minh)

(Major achievements)

Facilitation of trade

Toward full operation of the ASEAN Trade Repository (ATR), ASEAN has implemented work to exchange data between the National Trade Repositories (NTR) from eight current ASEAN countries.

Tariff procedures (adopting advanced rules)

Classification of tariffs (including all member countries), evaluation of tariffs (excluding Malaysia and Myanmar), certificates of origin (excluding Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Philippines)

Conciliation of standards and certifications

  • Standards in the fields of priority products were conciliated.
  • The Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) was adopted in the fields of electrical and electronic products and medical care.

(Future tasks)

For the public-private partnerships,

  • Enhancing public-private partnerships
  • Accepting more participants from the private sector in order to deepen the integration of ASEAN

For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),

  • Strengthening industrial collaboration between SMEs and multinational companies
  • Sharing strategic models to involve SMEs in global supply chains

Strengthening ASEAN connectivity

  • Sharing experiences and best practices in terms of project development technology, and principles and frameworks for public-private partnerships (PPP).