Dr. Balaz Szantos from the Faculty of Political Science at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University. (Photo: VNA)The summits take place, virtually, as the region is facing challenges in multiple areas, from the severe COVID-19 resurgence to geopolitical uncertainties.
The COVID-19 still poses the biggest challenge to Southeast Asia, Szantos said. “While vaccination is underway, the public health emergency remains,” he noted, adding that “ASEAN leaders will have to start working out a framework for economic recovery.”
According to him, key regional economies have been critically weakened by the pandemic and it will require both a strong vision and ASEAN cooperation to create a recovery process where countries don’t pursue short term economic gains at the expense of each other.
He took tourism – a key industry in many states – as an example, saying that it is important that efforts to promote the return of tourism should not be done with adversity to other ASEAN members.
He called on ASEAN to focus on developing a consensus-based recovery plan that ensures the bloc recovers as a collective.
“The pandemic offers an opportunity for ASEAN states to rethink their economies,” he continued. “Tourism has become a dominant industry in many ASEAN countries, but the externalities it exposed these economies to were neglected and growth allowed to forgo structural reforms.”
He suggested ASEAN member states rebuild their economies in a more sustainable and diversified manner post-pandemic.
“I would think developing domestic purchasing power is going to be very important: the pandemic showed the dangers of relying heavily on foreign spending while supplying cheap labour,” the scholar said.
He suggested that ASEAN nations need to develop an economy that can support the country even if tourists decide to stay away, especially as it is questionable whether travel patterns will ever return to the pre-pandemic state.
Szantos stressed that advancing the economy to create a strong professional class and indigenous technology and industry would help the population suffering declining purchasing power due to stagnant wages and increasing living costs.
He went on to highlight the role of Vietnam as ASEAN Chair last year, saying Vietnam held the chairmanship at a difficult time. “But ASEAN has so far weathered crisis without outright fracturing,” he said, “in this sense Vietnam has accomplished its mission, which has been to hold the organization together at a time where it was very tempting for member states to simply look out for their own.”
“I think what ASEAN needs right now is to have a recovery plan that serves the interests of all member states and safeguards ASEAN from creeping influence through various debt trap scenarios,” he emphasized.
“It is going to be hard to refuse foreign economic assistance to achieve a speedy recovery, even if those come with significant strings attached,” he explained, so “it is going to be important for ASEAN to adopt a framework that mitigates such threats, which includes advocacy against taking the ‘easy way out’ by subscribing to massive foreign loan programmes and finding alternate models of recovery.”/.
VNA
