Eurasia Review
19 March 2015
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Towards Closer ASEAN-Latin American Ties – Analysis
Towards Closer ASEAN-Latin American Ties – Analysis
ASEAN is poised to develop closer ties with the Pacific Alliance of four Latin American states, which share an openness to international trade and investment and are comfortable with their relationship with the major powers.
Prospects have opened for a trans-Pacific connection between East Asia and Latin America with the inauguration of an institutional relationship between ASEAN and the new Pacific Alliance (PA) comprising Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. The ASEAN-PA forum represents a partnership of equals that creates a bridge across the Pacific and provides an opportunity to increase trade, investment and services linkages.
An inaugural ASEAN-PA Foreign Ministers Meeting was held in New York in September 2014. The PA Ministers invited ASEAN to consider ways to cooperate in line with the PA mandate of building links in trade, investment, services and people-to-people connectivity. Singapore has been appointed as the ASEAN coordinator for ASEAN-PA relations.
There are currently moves to organise a meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of ASEAN (CPR) and PA Ambassadors in Jakarta in May, which could lay the groundwork for an ASEAN-PA Ministerial Meeting on the side-lines of the Forum for East Asia and Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) Foreign Ministers Meeting to be hosted by Costa Rica in July/August 2015.
…Barry Desker is a Distinguished Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
RSIS / Online
Last updated on 20/03/2015
