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AFTA

The ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) is an agreement by the member nations of ASEAN concerning local manufacturing in all ASEAN countries. The AFTA agreement was signed on January 28, 2008 in Singapore. When the AFTA agreement was originally signed, ASEAN had six members, namely, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Vietnam joined in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. The latecomers have not fully met the AFTA's obligations, but they are officially considered part of the AFTA as they were required to sign the agreement upon entry into ASEAN, and were given longer time frames in which to meet AFTA's tariff reduction obligations. On summit held in November 2007 decision was made to start creating an internal market with four liberties of transfers as the internal market in the EU, where trade, services, capital and labor can freely be transferred from one economy of the member state to another one. The plan is to span this process over the period till 2015.

OPEN SKY

The ASEAN Open Sky policy aims to liberalize air travel between member cities. The agreement was proposed by the ASEAN Air Transport Working Group and endorsed by the ASEAN Transport Ministers during a meeting in Myanmar in October 2003. The agreement will be implemented beginning January 1, 2009, with the air routes between capital cities of member countries to be liberalized within that year, and would then expand to cover other cities by 2015. Singapore and Malaysia have had separate talks to open the Singapore/Kuala Lumpur route before 2009. The Singapore/Kuala Lumpur route will be open to other Malaysian and Singaporean airlines from February 2008.