SINGAPORE, Feb 28 (Bernama) -- In preparing to take over the ASEAN chairmanship next year, Malaysia is stepping up efforts to eliminate fears arising from misconception by some quarters that the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will bring negative impacts to member countries.

Come 2015, coinciding with Malaysia's chairmanship, the AEC will come into force and thus Malaysia has a significant role to play in ensuring everything falls into place.

Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said: "There is this fear that next year, with the AEC, we are going to suffer, our Malaysian businesses will be adversely affected.

"That's not correct, we will benefit, and we are going to eliminate that fear. Actually, Malaysia has benefited from ASEAN. It (AEC) doesn't benefit (only) one country, it benefits us including all member countries," he told BERNAMA in an interview, Friday.

Mustapa said Malaysia will aggressively step up measures through outreach programmes to raise awareness on the AEC.

"We are going to step up on AEC because next year we are chairing ADEAN after taking over from Myanmar are who currently the grouping's chair," he said.

Mustapa was in Singapore attending the Trans Pacific Ministerial Meeting and the ASEAN Economic Ministers Retreat in the republic.

He noted 2014 is a very important year as "we want the people to know what ASEAN and AEC are about.

"Malaysia is (also) chairman of a Working Group on the ASEAN Post-2015 vision, so we are playing this role and stepping up our engagement with society from all walks of life.

"This is important as we want people to understand what ASEAN stands for and more importantly what benefits we derive from ASEAN.

"So back home in Malaysia, what we will do is to engage more with our trade and business associations and also the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) and others to find out what else we need to do in order to reduce non-tariff measures as well," he said.

"We are a firm believer in a freer flow of goods and services. We are one of the members of ASEAN, so ASEAN is an important pillar in our foreign policy," he stressed.

Mustapa noted that some people believe that by 2015, doctors and nurses will be coming from the Philippines, besides engineers and lawyers from Thailand, to practise in Malaysia.

"The truth is that Malaysia has benefited. We also have Malaysian companies overseas, they are also in Singapore, Indonesia -- that is about ASEAN," he said.

"We want more investment from Indonesia and other ASEAN countries including Singapore.

"We have to do more to promote intra-ASEAN investment because investment creates more jobs, there will also be linkages in the economy in particular for the SMEs," he said.

The aim of the AEC is to turn ASEAN into a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region with equitable economic development that is fully integrated into the global economy.

By Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah,

bernama.com.my

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