Asean-Japan Centre enhances economic partnerships
Asean-Japan Centre enhances economic partnerships
Over 35 years, the Asean Promotion Centre on Trade, Investment and Tourism, or the Asean-Japan Centre for short, has been contributing to enhance the partnership between the Asean Member States and Japan.
The Centre, established in 1981 with an agreement between the governments of the Asean Member States and Japan, aimed to embody the Fukuda Doctrine (1977) into their relationship by emphasising, amongst other things, the significance of heart-to-heart understanding and equal partnership between the two parties.
Towards this mission, the centre has maintained a regional centre for promoting trade, investment, tourism and personal exchanges between the Asean Member States and Japan.
Secretary General of the Centre, Mr Masataka Fujita told Vientiane Times that the centre has recently been undergoing operational as well as administrative reform to mainstream the new development framework of sustainable development into all its activities, and bring forth concrete, visible outcomes and impacts.
According to SG Fujita, sustainable development constitutes the main important part of the reform, and the overreaching principle to plan and implement the centre's activities.
As the centre is a small organisation, the number of its activities, human resources and budget are limited compared with other bigger organisations. However, we aim at the quality of the activities, trying to bring impacts and becoming a model for other organisations, he said.
SG Fujita shared some of the centre's efforts in the areas of its four mandates: promotion of trade, investment, tourism and exchanges between persons.
Trade Promotion
In the trade area, SG Fujita mentioned that the centre has focused on the promotion of Asean products to Japan. One way is to provide technical upgrades to the Asean products with the help of Japanese trade experts and designers to add more value to the products.
If you wish to sell any artifacts or products in Japan, they have to be high standard. Therefore, Japanese experts and designers of our activities provide support to make them become marketable in Japan, he explained.
SG Fujita shared the centre's recent efforts regarding the technical upgrades. One of them is the Mekong Design Selection Programme, which is a CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) support programme to transform their designed products to be exhibited at the G-Mark Exhibition in Tokyo with the involvement of advisory work by Japanese designers.
Also, the centre has implemented a programme to introduce Asean textile and fabrics, which are still not widely used in the Japanese fashion market, and make them marketable in Japan, with the collaboration of young Japanese designers.
SG Fujita also explained that the centre has started two new activities ? service trade and new forms of trade. He mentioned that, in the past, the centre's trade promotion activities focused on visible goods products. However, service products today account for one quarter of the total trade value, and have become more and more important to trade.
He stressed that the service market in trade provides opportunities for each country to grow. Likewise, non-equity modes (NEM) of trade are becoming a new trend in global trade.
Working together with the governments, we identify the present states and issues, and provide policy suggestions on how to maximise benefits and minimise the risks of liberalising services trade as well as the new forms of trade, he said.
Investment Promotion
As for investment promotion, SG Fujita elaborated that the centre has two main activities. One is the investment seminar, which invites top-ranking officials from the investment agencies of the Asean Member States to Japan to give briefings on the investment policies and incentives in their respective countries to Japanese companies or stakeholders.
The other is the investment promotion mission, in which participants, consisting mostly of the Japanese SMEs and publicity and media personnel, will render visits to local investment agencies, Japanese companies and industrial estates in the Asean region.
However, this year the centre is focused more on policy dialogues between Japanese stakeholders and high-level officials of the Asean Member States. In the past, the seminar has always been the one-way provision of information but now we have started bilateral dialogues, SG Fujita said.
He also mentioned that the centre plans to develop the dialogues to come up with strategic policy proposals to specific Asean investment policies and the policies affecting investment in the Asean Member States.
Tourism Promotion
In the area of tourism, SG Fujita explained that the centre promotes both inbound and outbound tourism to and from Japan. He shared that, as part of our outbound tourism promotion from Japan to the Asean Member States, it launched the Mekong Tourism Award in the fiscal year 2015, which gives an award to attractive tour products, to further stimulate tourism to CLMV countries in Japan.
Tour products featured on Laos won the Eco Tourism Award and Unique Tour Award at the inaugural Mekong Tourism Awards, he added.
Referring to its focus on sustainable tourism, SG Fujita mentioned that the centre has organised technical workshops in recent years on different themes, such as ecotourism, cruise tourism, cultural and heritage tourism and community-based tourism, a kind of tourism to support the development of communities through attracting sustainable tourism.
This year, we are providing opportunities for management-level tourism stakeholders in the Asean region to update their knowledge on the Japanese tourism market and to learn about how the Japanese tourism industry and community handle accessibility for all people regardless of their physical limitations, disability or age, he said.
Personal Exchange Promotion
As for promotion of exchanges of persons, SG Fujita mentioned that the centre is particularly looking at Asean women entrepreneurs, as part of the activities to empower women for sustainable development. He said that the centre creates linkages between Asean women entrepreneurs and Japanese business persons to help the former establish footholds in Japan and global markets.
SG Fujita also commented on Laos. He said that the centre has conducted many bilateral as well as regional projects targeting Laos. In particular, he said, the centre pays special attention to capacity building programmes in trade, investment and tourism for the CLMV countries to narrow development gaps in the Asean region.
SG Fujita concluded that as the relations between the Asean region and Japan assume greater importance after the launch of the Asean Community, he believes the centre will add further weight as a promotion hub of businesses as well as personal exchanges between the two parties.
He emphasised that the centre will step up its reform efforts to become more useful for enhancing Asean-Japan relations as well as Asean's integration process.
