Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the 24th Annual Meeting of the ASEAN Economic Ministers
[Released on October 22, 1992]
Asean in the heart
of a growing world
I HOPE the brightness of our welcome compensates somehow for the occasional dimness of some of our facilities.
As you know, we are in rather difficult circumstances. Things are such that Filipinos are sometimes categorized according to how much they owe.
If you owe 28 pesos, you are a beggar. If you owe 280,000 pesos, you’re an enterprising businessman. But if you owe 28 billion dollars, you are the President of the Philippines.
A new phase in regional partnership
But things are not that bad and really I was exaggerating. For just the other day, Secretary Roy Navarro here walked into a shop accompanied by his aide to check on prices, and he said: “I don’t think inflation is all that bad in the Philippines. Look at those handkerchiefs—one peso apiece. And shirts for ten pesos. And trousers for fifteen pesos.”
At this point, his aide nervously tugged at his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary. We’re not in a men’s shop. We’re in a laundry.”
But seriously, this 24th Annual Meeting of the Economic Ministers promises to be a watershed in the history of ASEAN. For you are expected to define both the range and the direction of the journey our six countries shall be taking together toward full-fledged economic cooperation.
This new phase of our regional partnership has become both urgent and imperative. Trends in the world economy offer us both a challenge and an opportunity. This challenge is posed by many of the economic blocs forming in many parts of the world.
However, even as the world today may be significantly different from what it was two decades ago, the aspirations of our ASEAN founding fathers for regional economic integration remain pertinent and compelling.
The opportunity is presented by the centralizing forces pulling the global economy together. These include increasing interdependence among nations; and the advent of electronic interchange, which raises by a quantum leap the efficiency of long-distance trade.
The challenge—and this opportunity—compel us in ASEAN to shore up our competitive edge and bargaining position.
The Philippines is prepared fully to do its part—by putting its economic house in order, so as not to be a drag on ASEAN’s brisk economic pace; and by honoring its every commitment to its neighbors and partners.
An openness to outside competition
My Government has placed its hope for economic recovery and sustainable development neither in continued protectionism nor in State control of the economy but in individual enterprise and an openness to outside competition.
In this spirit, we subscribe to the concept of an ASEAN free-trade area, to which my distinguished predecessor, President Corazón C. Aquino, committed the Philippines in Singapore last January.
Our Medium-term Development Plan for 1993-98 includes programs to reduce mass poverty to half its present level; reduce income inequality, generate industrial jobs and expand investments in education, health care, social services and skills-training for our people.
In this work we have no room for the kind of behavior shown by the man who sat in a boat, boring a hole under his seat. He said, “Don’t worry, shipmates. It’s only my seat, not yours.”
In all of these, we look to our relations with our ASEAN partners—and with the wider world—as a pillar of our national development.
Clearly there are considerable opportunities for ASEAN to tap more fully in the world economy. Our economies should grasp these opportunities as they develop. And how do we prepare ourselves for them?
Preparing for economic opportunities
First, ASEAN must build a stronger base for interdependence. If we do not convert into interdependence the chain of cooperation that has brought our economies together, then our separate countries—each one alone—surely will not stand up to complexities and intense competitiveness of the world economy.
Second, ASEAN must continually enhance its attractiveness for foreign investment. We must keep up this flow; also, our healthy competition for foreign investments into our national economies.
Third, ASEAN must continue building up its industrial infrastructure. ASEAN has a large and diverse range of mineral, agricultural and other resource-based primary products and raw materials on which sturdy industrial infrastructure can be built. This in turn will encourage the growth of processing industries.
Fourth, ASEAN must nurture intermediate and supporting industries to convert processed primary products. These industries can service not only a regional but an international network of industries.
Fifth, we must promote our small-and medium-scale enterprises. These industries will need time and support to adjust. But given the proper support, they will surely prosper in a more liberal and open environment.
Sixth, ASEAN must develop service industries—particularly in management, finance and information.
Finally, ASEAN must invest more intensively in the development of its human resources.
The framework agreements among the heads of government on enhancing economic cooperation have laid the basis for achieving these urgent tasks. So let us waste no time in putting these policy agreements in motion.
I am confident that whatever you agree on at this conference will work to our mutual advantage. I am just as hopeful for your scheduled dialogue with Japan’s Minister of International Trade and Industry and his team.
The future of ASEAN will depend not only on promoting the integration of our economies but also on strengthening our relationships within the broader community of nations.
Reducing economic barriers
ASEAN should take a leadership role in enhancing these relationships through cooperative efforts in reducing barriers to trade, investment and transfer of technology and in developing our precious human resources.
Through the ASEAN Free Trade Arrangement (AFTA), ASEAN can offer a dynamic and growing market to potential investors and, with improved economies of scale, ASEAN industries could take part more fully in global production.
The implementation of AFTA charts the future direction of Intra-ASEAN Economic Cooperation. It will have far-reaching implications on many of our economic undertakings within the next 15 years. They will not only widen intra-ASEAN trade industrial integration and harmonization, but with the pressure of freer trade, also put the discipline of stronger competition on our production sectors.
The challenge to us in Government, therefore, is in accelerating the efforts to provide the structure and mechanism that would support the transitional adjustments of our domestic industries. We should provide for a stable and supportive policy environment and the infrastructure that would facilitate the freer movement of goods. We should also provide the appropriate fiscal and financial policies and reduce red tape, which acts as physical barriers to trade.
We all need each other to survive
In the face of these developments, we cannot overemphasize the important role of an invigorated and enhanced ASEAN secretariat. Changes in the ASEAN structure and organization itself would ensure that decisions are made expeditiously and actions implemented effectively.
Equally important, the ASEAN mechanism should ensure that there will be broad consultation and that the fruits of our labors are shared equitably across the broadest spectrum of our national societies.
And more than anything else, the ASEAN mechanism should ensure that we maintain a continuously healthy relationship with the rest of the world, especially with our dialogue partners and with the emerging regional groupings. We all need each other to survive.
We should not be caught off our guard. Free-trade arrangements are being undertaken in other parts of the world to create greater competitive advantage, ASEAN should therefore know how to play the game and win.
Further, our establishment of AFTA should not be regarded as a substitute for the multilateral approach to trade negotiations in moving the world toward a more open global economic system. We must build on our commitments to push for a successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the further strengthening of the multilateral GATT system.
The success of the Uruguay Round will bring an end to the fallacy of seeing AFTA as merely a countervailing force against the European Community or NAFTA or any other bloc, AFTA should be pursued because of its own economic merits. The pragmatic approach of implementing AFTA through consecutive tariff cuts over 15 years suggests that the “own merit” view now prevails in ASEAN policy-making.
Your mission, ladies and gentlemen, is to lay the conversion for greater inter-Asian trade; the establishment of joint ventures between the East Asian tiger-economies and our own; and the transfer of modern technology to our workers.
The job is a tremendous one. But so are its potential rewards—the rise of an East Asian economic bloc comparable to those of Europe and North America by the year 2000.
Events in the world compel us to urgency in this work of binding our economies closer together. So let us closely monitor, analyze and take action on the growing rapport between Japan and China and between China and Taiwan. In both situations economic pragmatism, not political factors, appears to be the leading consideration.
Politicians drive, Economic Ministers putt
I do not underestimate the magnitude of the job before you over these next few months. But you, the Economic Ministers, have been put in charge, because you are known to regard situations not as problems but as solutions.
Those of you who like to bet when you play golf must know the saying: “Drive for show, putt for the money.”
The length of your drive may dramatize the strength of your game. But it is the direction of your approach and the precision of your putt that win you the match.
The golf metaphor expresses aptly the relationship between the political leaders who drive and the Economic Ministers who putt.
We the politicians—for people will agree to call us “statesmen” only after we’re dead—are the most visible on the stage of Southeast Asia.
But it is you, the Economic Ministers—with your quiet work and your expertise— who shall bring to our country, to ASEAN, to the condition of sustained prosperity to which we all aspire.
Source
:
Presidential Museum and Library
Ramos, F. V. (1993).
To win the future : people empowerment for national
development.
[Manila] : Friends of Steady Eddie.