Association of Southeast Asian Nations

16 October 2008

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Imagine a stable, prosperous and highly competitive economy, where there is free flow of goods, services, investment and a freer flow of capital, equitable economic development and reduced poverty and socio-economic disparities. This is exactly what the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, also known as ASEAN, promotes. Their plan is to accomplish all of this by the year 2020; they refer to this plan as the ASEAN Vision 2020. Several governments in Southeast Asia sponsor the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Specifically the countries involved are Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. These countries have all collaborated on fundamental principals of ASEAN so that they can all cooperate with each other and ASEAN can function productively.

The Vision 2020 plan has been established because majority of Southeast Asia has had high economic growth, stability and significant poverty alleviation over the past few years. Trade and investment flows have also become more successful in the past few years. It is believed that ASEAN has made an impact on these improvements and is continually doing so with their Vision 2020 plan. Thus said, it has shown that this organization has been taking an economical growth approach to help out Southeast Asia. They continually try and improve the economy to make the region stronger as a whole.

ASEAN is also contributing a lot to aid the people who are in poverty. First off, they have stated “The development and enhancement of human resources is a key strategy for employment generation, alleviating poverty and socio-economic disparities, and ensuring economic growth with equity.” Besides this they have also created several programs for the region to benefit from. The social welfare, family and population ASEAN program