50 years on, Asean gears up for new challenges

FINANCE ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have just concluded their 22nd Meeting in Singapore, as Asean embarks on the second half of its journey towards its centennial. As now the longest-serving grouping in the developing world, it is timely to ask, how has it fared economically?

Assessments of Asean as a regional integration endeavour often fail to separate the organisation's underlying objectives from those that appear on the surface. Analysts assume, quite understandably, that the primary purpose of regional cooperation agreements is to increase regional integration.

If this were the case, traditional quantitative measures of integration - such as shares of intra-regional trade and investment - would be the right metrics for assessing performance.