Taiwan on road to joining ASEAN: Philippines

Non-confrontational policies, commitment to economy may help Taiwan enter organization

By Joseph Yeh, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter, 2009-03-27 12:48 AM

Taiwan News It is possible for Taiwan to join the ASEAN family in the future as long as its government continues to adopt a non-confrontational policy with China and to strengthen a barrier-free and close economic cooperation with East Asian countries, said Margarito Teves, secretary of the Philippines Department of Finance in Taipei yesterday.

"At the moment we have ASEAN plus three (China, Japan, South Korea), and ASEAN plus six that includes New Zealand, Australia and India. There is a possibility of the ASEAN plus seven that includes Taiwan," Teves said.

The Philippine Finance Secretary noted that the process is probably going in that direction for Taiwan with the continuing policies of President Ma Ying-jeou's in terms of his non-confrontational approach with China and the removal of trade restraints and barriers.

"You are building the blocks to move in this direction," he said, "and the ASEAN countries including the Philippines are also corresponding to these building blocks in terms of economic agreements first, so the series of moves will eventually result (in the inclusion of Taiwan)."

Teves made the above comment in response to a question made by an attendee during his speech held at the think tank Taiwan Institute of Economic Research yesterday in Taipei.

The attendee asked if Teves can foresee Taiwan joining the ASEAN plus three forums in the near future.

During his speech in the TIER, Teves gave a briefing on the Philippine and ASEAN responses to the global financial crisis.

He noted that his government has proposed a comprehensive economic resiliency plan in order to help the country amid the worldwide economic downturn.

"We are in the midst of the global financial storm, but the Philippines has remained true to the course we began years ago to further strengthen our economic buffers and hopefully we will emerge from the economic turbulence better and stronger."

The Philippine Finance Secretary who joined a special meeting of the ASEAN plus three finance ministers last month shared with the attendees of his speech the results of that meeting.

During the special meeting held in Thailand's southern resort island Phuket on Feb. 22, participating finance ministers agreed to speed up the process of operationalising the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization, a regional foreign reserve pool in case of currency flow shortage.

The ministers had reached an agreement during the meeting that, US$120 billion, instead of US$80 billion as initially proposed, will be injected into a reserve pool, with each participating country injecting a sum of foreign capital to help each other in a scenario of financial crisis.

Teves said that the exact size of the fund quota for each participating country and details of a management mechanism will be the issues to be discussed in the next meeting.

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