Southeast Asian nations officially launched an EU-inspired economic bloc over the New Year aimed at boosting the region’s trading clout and attracting more investment.

But analysts said a true single market was still a long way off.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hailed the project as a “milestone” in combining the economic force of a resource-rich and growing market of more than 600 million people.

… John Pang, a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said there would be only “slow and incremental progress” in integrating the economies of Southeast Asia.

“The AEC will not be raising the curtain on any radical change,” he wrote in a commentary.