The first meeting of ASEAN Ad Hoc Task Force on Developing New Vision on Food, Agriculture and Forestry towards 2020 was held recently in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The meeting aimed to realise an agreement on the need to develop a vision, objectives and goals of the ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry sectors towards 2020, based on the review of the current framework and Strategic Plan of Action (SPA).

The agreement was reached at the Special Senior Official Meeting of the 34th ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry (Special SOM-34 AMAF) held in Pakse, Champasak, Laos in August last year.

The meeting agreed that the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is not the final goal of ASEAN economic integration and while the establishment of AEC in 2015 is an important milestone, it also represents the start of a new phase in ASEAN’s continuing process towards deeper regional economic integration and community building beyond 2015.

The event finalised the time frame for developing the New Vision and outline of the review report. The review study is expected to be completed in mid-2015 and reported to the 37th Meeting of AMAF in 2015.

At the 22nd ASEAN Summit in Banda Seri Begawan, Brunei, the ASEAN leaders tasked all ASEAN Community Councils to begin work on a post-2015 vision, including consideration of what should form the next stages of ASEAN’s integration efforts across the three pillars as well strategic ideas on how ASEAN can maintain its relevance in the evolving regional architecture.

The meeting of the ASEAN Ad Hoc Task Force was supported by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ)./.