With this entity, which was officially launched on December 31, the aforementioned economies intend to facilitate greater movement of goods, services and capital in a market of 630 million people.
The document was signed by the host of the 27th Summit of the block, the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his counterpart Hun Sen from Cambodia; Thongsing Thammavong (Laos), Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore), Prayut Chan-o-cha (Thailand) and Nguyen Tan Dung (Vietnam).
It was also signed by the presidents Joko Widodo, from Indonesia; Benigno Aquino (Philippines), U Thein Sein (Myanmar) and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei.
The ASEAN Community supports itself on three pillars: politics and security, economy and culture-society, as its promoters hope to provide many benefits, especially economic, to their respective nations.
From these countries, it is the economic community the one that can initially contribute more to promote the integration of this group, which gross domestic product will become the seventh most valuable in the world, estimated at 2.6 billion dollars.
These territories eliminated tariff barriers and visa restrictions, to which are added close political and cultural ties as favorable elements to the new stage of its relations.
Besides this text, statesmen signed another statement that draws the lines of action of the next 10 years for the block, founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
The challenge of this association of nations, marked by diversity, can be seen in the words of Najib while inaugurating the summit the day before, when he asked: How do we make the ASEAN something that touches the daily lives of our people, how do we make our citizens feel, directly, that the chances of the Community we will establish are their own?
The leaders signed, also yesterday, a Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children, with which they seek to combat this scourge more effectively, including a greater protection to victims.
Among other high-level meetings, Malaysia also hosts the East Asia Summit, attended by those states, along with Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the United States.
At these meetings, the participants reaffirmed their firm rejection to terrorism and extremism, in order to condemn the recent attacks in France, Mali and Lebanon, as well as the explosion of a Russian plane in Egypt, among other violence acts.
With these meetings, the host country will conclude its mandate as head of the rotating presidency of ASEAN, which will be assumed by Laos.
hr/yor/rc/lam
PL-7/MNA
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