ASEAN economies in perspective

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional organisation which was formally established in Bang kok on 8 August 1967 upon the signing of the Joint Declaration by the foreign ministers from the five Southeast Asian count ries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. As its main objectives, the ASEAN organisation is devoted to the promotion of regional co-operation in the economic, social, cultural and technical fields. In the first few years of its existence ASEAN made little progress towards any substantial regional co-operation beyond laying down the framework for the five member countries to work out their consensus through periodic consultation. In recent years, however, especially after the political transformation of Indo-China in 1975, the wheels of ASEAN have really begun to move. Various issues of co-operation have been seriously considered and efforts made towards their implementation. Increasingly, ASEAN is becoming a vital political, social and economic grouping, which has already engaged growing attention from the superpowers as well as from Japan, Australia and New Zealand.