How Important Is MEA? Here's the explanation
Not felt it was past one year the ASEAN Economic Community
(AEC) or the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) running in all countries in
Southeast Asia. The impact is not really felt, especially if you are outside a
big city or not in a position as a businessman, so less sensitive to the
existence of free market policies that began in 2015 ago. It may be that among
us still do not know more about what the MEA is, what is the background, who
are the countries involved, what are the goals, and the positive and negative
impacts to what extent.
The implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was
followed by 10 countries in the Southeast Asian region, namely Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Laos, the Philippines,
Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. In addition to the participating countries, the
MEA has several important things that need to be listened to so that we are
more determined in dealing with it. The following explanation.
The establishment of MEA has a fairly long journey. In 1977,
ASEAN countries signed the ASEAN's Preferential Trade Agreement even though the
agreement on economics between ASEAN countries was only carried out in the 90s.
In the previous era, ASEAN had made several agreements in the economic field,
as stipulated in the Framework Agreement on Enhancing ASEAN Economic
Cooperation in 1992. After that, followed the agreement in the service sector
through the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services in 1995. Then following the
agreement in in the field of goods trade in 2010 with the ASEAN Trade in Goods
Agreement.
The following are some facts behind MEA.
- The total population of MEA member countries is 622 million, half of which constitute the productive age category. ASEAN has the highest number of human resources after China and India.
- MEA was first declared at the 9th ASEAN Summit in 2003 which refers to the big vision of ASEAN Vision 2020.
- The idea of the AEC was accelerated after the ASEAN member countries agreed on the implementation of the AEC.
- In 2007, the MEA was agreed upon during the 12th ASEAN Summit and will be officially adopted in 2015.
- MEA or AEC is part of the ASEAN Community which includes three components, which can not be separated from one another. The three components are the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the ASEAN Political-Security Community, and the ASEAN Socio-cultural Community.
- MEA was formed to maintain economic stability in all MEA member countries with the principle and focus of the MEA is to facilitate and increase the flow of goods, services, capital, investment interests, and labor between ASEAN countries.
- In addition to the interests of ASEAN countries, the MEA also has a goal that all participating countries have the ability to compete in the global economy.