{"id":3998,"date":"2014-03-10T14:21:09","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T18:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2014-03-10T14:21:09","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T18:21:09","slug":"thai-e-newsletter-for-february-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/thai-e-newsletter-for-february-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai E-Newsletter for February, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<strong>ASEAN reaffirms one community goal<\/strong><br \/>\n<br \/>\nSINGAPORE &#8211; Economic ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have reaffirmed their commitment to achieve their aim of creating an economic community by 2015 despite signs of a slowdown in the group&#8217;s pace of implementing measures toward that goal in recent months.<\/p>\n<p>Asean official sources, however, said that an internal scorecard showed that the group&#8217;s progress in implementing measures to achieve the Asean economic community had slightly slowed down in the last three months of last year with a decline in the implementation rate from 79% in August last year to 72% in December with measures not fully implemented. Asean plans to develop a draft framework for enhanced Asean economic integration for the next 10 years, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The ministers also agreed at the meeting to raise public awareness on the AEC, promote a more equitable economic development in the region, strengthen regional cooperation for the development of small and medium-sized firms and develop a regional framework for public-private partnership. The group is also conducting a pilot case study on nontariff barriers.<\/p>\n<p>It said Asean&#8217;s economic outlook is still &#8220;robust&#8221; but warned of some downside risks such as capital outflows, sharp currency depreciations, emerging inflationary pressures and tightening financial conditions, which could dampen economic growth. They said maintaining the region&#8217;s resilient macroeconomic fundamentals will help to manage these risks.<\/p>\n<p>The ministers agreed on the priorities of the Asean economic community for this year by promoting equitable economic development and strengthening regional cooperation for small and medium-sized firms.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting was chaired by Myanmar&#8217;s Minister for National Planning and Economic Development Kan Zaw as Myanmar holds the rotating chairmanship of Asean this year.<\/p>\n<p>Other issues discussed include the progress of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade agreement negotiations that began in May last year and preparations to launch negotiations for an Asean-Hong Kong FTA early this year.<\/p>\n<p>Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bangkokpost.com\/business\/news\/397461\/asean-reaffirms-one-community-goal\" title=\"Original Article from the Bangkok Post\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Excerpted from The Bangkok Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>[dcs_link icon=&#8221;download&#8221;<br \/>\nurl=&#8221;http:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-content\/uploads\/ENewsletters\/OCANewsletterFeb14.pdf&#8221;]Please download the full newsletter here[\/dcs_link].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ASEAN reaffirms one community goal SINGAPORE &#8211; Economic ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have reaffirmed their commitment to achieve their aim of creating an economic community by 2015 despite signs of a slowdown in the group&#8217;s pace of implementing measures toward that goal in recent months. Asean official sources, however, said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4,23,14],"tags":[43],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commercethaiusa.org\/oca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}