S-E Asia needs to do more to open markets: study

Beijing

DESPITE numerous pledges and years of effort to transform South-east Asia into a single market, the 10-nation region remains resistant to free-flowing trade and fortified against imports, to the cost of some global companies, according to a study for one of the region's biggest investors.

The study, commissioned and paid for by US carmaker General Motors (GM), highlights a lack of progress by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to harmonise trade and investment rules, leaving the car industry with little to show for a decade of trade liberalisation.

In the study, consultancy Oxford Economics found that tariffs in Asean on imported goods such as cars generally have fallen "dramatically", but this is undermined by industrial policies that promote some products, through tax and other incent…