22 Jul 2013


WTI Faculty Member Discusses Service Sector Reforms in ASEAN

On 18 July 2013, Pierre Sauvé, a faculty member at the WTI and the Institute’s Director of External Programs and Academic Partnerships, gave a presentation on "Services Trade and the ASEAN Economic Community" in the Asian Development Bank’s Asian International Economics Network (AIEN) Speaker Series.

The event was held at ADB Headquarters, Manila. Presentation slides and a webcast of his remarks are available on the AIEN’s Speaker Series page.


A year and a half before ASEAN Member States (AMS) meet their agreed 2015 deadline towards the establishment of an East Asian Community (AEC), Pierre Sauvé’s presentation took stock of where things stand in the centrally important area of services trade. Already the single largest contributor to output and employment in the majority of AMS, services assume critical importance in the context of regional and global value chain analysis. Services also lie at the heart of policies aimed at allowing the most advanced ASEAN countries to escape the middle income trap.


The presentation highlighted the significant gaps in regulatory and institutional capacities calling for continued doses of variable geometry in rule-design and the sequencing of market opening. The session also situated ASEAN alongside many of the world's major integration areas, documenting where effective market opening is lagging and where scaled up efforts will be needed in order to meet the 2015 AEC Blueprint deadlines.  

The attached document summarises his remarks.