LAST Friday, I attended the 2nd ASEAN and Asia forum in Singapore, through the generosity of the organiser, SIIA. This was my first track II conference and I also managed to meet Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of UN ESCAP.

The forum invited a respectable list of speakers, from ambassadors and research institute directors to high-level government officials and private sector honchos. And I was keen to hear what they have to say on the issues on ASEAN and Asia.

The forum began with a history of ASEAN. Despite the almost 42 years of existence, ASEAN is still very young organisation. Its real age should be between 10 to 15 years because the last four members joined in 1995, 1997 and 1999. Notably, the bloc has achieved its initial objective of political stability and no major armed conflicts.

Tan Sri Jawhar Hassan, the CEO of Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Malaysia, articulated this viewpoint in his honest yet optimistic assessment of ASEAN’s past, present and near future.

Dr. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Director, Institute of Security and International Studies, a think-tank in Thailand, also mentioned that there are no major wars among the member countries since the inception of ASEAN in 1967. The political stability helped the newly independent countries (with the exception of Thailand in 1967) to focus on their national development.

Of course, ASEAN should not stop at just achieving political stability. They should focus on other issues so that as a regional bloc, they are effective as an initiator of collaborative and beneficial plans. However Jawhar Hassan cautioned that ASEAN might have too many plans on its plate and should focus on implementation.

In short, ASEAN need more action and less talk. They need to start implementing and enforcing more of its agreements and plans, rather than engaging in more dialogues to discuss grandeur plans.

Intra-ASEAN trade is a quarter of the entire ASEAN trade. The member countries of ASEAN mainly export its goods and services outside of ASEAN. Even though intra-ASEAN trade is growing and also encouraged, the reality that most of the population in the region is poor, do not provide a strong aggregate demand for the group, hence they turn to non-ASEAN countries for trade.

This implied that cooperation with other major economic powers, especially near the Southeast Asia is important to the survival of ASEAN.

Thitinan thinks that the ASEAN-3 group is critical for the bloc to be effective and to be taken seriously as a regional geo-political and economic organisation. The ASEAN-3 group consists of ASEAN nations, China, Japan and South Korea.

With regional political stability (though Thailand is having some problems there) and against the backdrop of the “biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression”, economic issues are at the forefront of the ASEAN agenda.

Dr Muh Chatib Basri, director, Institute for Economic and Social Research, a think-tank in Indonesia, believed that emerging countries in the Asia region are going to be the engine of economic growth. The high saving rate of Asia allows the region to accumulate a vast amount of surplus and he proposed that we invest of investing this surplus in Asia and not outside of Asia.

Mr. Hidetoshi Nishimura, executive director, ERIA, a policy research institute, supported Basri’s recommendation by encouraging Asia governments to invest in good projects in Asia. He commented that infrastructure investment is crucial for the medium and long term growth of the region.

Dato Paduka Timothy Ong, chairman, Brunei economic development board, is more critical of ASEAN lack of progress on economic integration. He praised ASEAN on delivering political stability. However, he cautioned that ASEAN still has a long way to go in economic integration, especially when the ASEAN countries are rather fragmented in its state of development.

He cited the Doing Business 2009 report by World Bank to illustrate the diversity of the economic development of ASEAN countries. In that report, Brunei came in at 88, which according to his colleagues, is an auspicious number. He retorted jokingly that 8 is also an auspicious number and would have been a respectable rank too!

Besides economic issues, the notoriety of ASEAN’s reluctance in engaging the civic groups is also well noted. The lack of track III diplomacy in Southeast Asia is also hindering the bloc from progressing beyond political and economic issues. Thitinan commented that the reason for the lack of track III dialogues is because ASEAN leaders do not put emphasis on the civic society in the region.

Perhaps the only civic issue that ASEAN discussed about, as evident in the 1990s, was the environmental issue; namely the haze problem. Even then, it has an economical slant.

The first two panel sessions offered up interesting views on ASEAN’s history, development and economic challenges. However the next two sessions on natural resources and leadership, unfortunately, are dull as a nail.

To be fair, I think the only interesting presentation in these two sessions was by Mr. Warren Fernandez, former political editor of the Straits Times and current regional communications director for Shell Eastern Petroleum, a major oil products company. He gave an energy-crisis response dichotomy developed by Shell, whose extreme poles are called “scramble” and “blueprints”.

Energy security is an important issue and is also critical to a country’s economic development. The scarcity of traditional fuels such as coal, oil and gas as well as its negative externalities, is a driving political message by U.S. president Obama in his climate change agenda. It is also on the agenda of ASEAN and Asia.

The “blueprints” path illustrated a sustainable way to finding long-term solutions to energy security, and most importantly, a greener and renewable way to power our economies and hopefully save our planet.

In summary, the forum has been beneficial to me, in terms of experiential learning. I was given a glimpse of the industry that I wanted to enter: development economics, international trade research and policy-making. Most importantly, it showed me the intellectual gap between the speakers and myself, which would provide a catalyst for me to develop my personal knowledge and skills further.