Malaysia is well-positioned to successfully shape the Asean Economic Community (AEC), slated to be implemented in 2015, during its role as Asean Chair, said Marc Mealy, Vice President-Policy, US-Asean Business Council.
Mealy said he hoped Malaysia could use its leadership and expertise in various sectors to help other Asean member countries in what they are lacking.
“With Malaysia now as the new Chair of Asean and in this most important year, we are hoping that Malaysia can really be a good leader in a couple of different areas.
“For example, Malaysia has been very successful in building the right environment for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to really do well in the country.
“We think that Malaysia can take some of that knowledge and expertise and help other countries in Asean develop a similar policy environment, similar institutions to help other SMEs to be successful,” he told Bernama when met on the sidelines of the US-Asean Business Council’s forum on Human Capital and 21st Century Skills Development here Thursday.
Although, Malaysia has done a very good job in building the infrastructure in the country, Mealy said there were many other Asean countries which faced constraints on further development due to the limits of infrastructure.
“So we hope that may be Malaysia can use its leadership and expertise to help the region to be more effective and building and investing in the infrastructure,” he said.
He noted Malaysia had also done a good job in terms of putting together a good environment in developing the information and communications technology (ICT) sector with some of the best policy and regulations, while working very well with the private sector to really create knowledge workers.
Mealy hoped Malaysia could lend some of those experience and leadership to help other countries to put in place similar policies, regulations and partnerships with the private sector that would really make the AEC much more successful during Malaysia’s chairmanship.–BERNAMA
