Excellencies, Co-Chair, Senior Officials, Deputy Secretary-General of the ASEAN Secretariat, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning and thank you for attending the 3rd ASEAN Geoeconomics Task Force (AGTF) Meeting.
Together with my Indonesian counterpart Pak Djatmiko Bris Witjaksono, Director General of International Trade of Negotiation at the Ministry of Trade of Indonesia, we are co-chairing the 3rd ASEAN Geoeconomic Task Force (AGTF) Meeting today. Also joining us is H.E. Satvinder Singh, ASEAN Deputy Secretary-General (Economics).
The AGTF was first mooted at the ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Retreat in Desaru, Johor, in February, and subsequently established at a Special ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting on 10 April.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue that “New tools like the ASEAN Geoeconomics Task Force are helping us navigate external shocks with sharper coordination and foresight.”
The AGTF aims to find ways to address the challenges posted by the Trump tariffs, its second-order effects (such as trade diversion of goods originally destined for the United States market), and, most importantly, the future of ASEAN integration.
As Prime Minister Anwar said at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting last week in Kuala Lumpur that
“Tariffs, export restrictions, and investment barriers have now become the sharpened instruments of geopolitical rivalry. This is no passing storm. It is the new weather of our time. ASEAN must confront this reality with clarity and conviction. We must read the landscape clinically, speak with coherence, and act with foresight.
I therefore urge even closer alignment between ASEAN’s foreign and economic policy tracks. Our Foreign and Economic Ministers must move in concert – because the challenges we face do not observe bureaucratic fiefdoms. Nor can our responses.”
Inspired by this spirit of breaking silos, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hassan invited the experts from AGTF – former Indonesia Trade Minister Ibu Mari Pengestu and former MITI Secretary-General Tan Sri Rebecca Sta Maria – to brief the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
The other Malaysian expert in AGTF is Fraziali Ismail, Assistant Governor of Bank Negara. AGTF also aspires to bring the economic and finance sides of ASEAN, respectively represented by economic/trade and finance ministries, to work more in sync.
As a result of the briefing by Ibu Mari and Tan Sri Rebecca, ASEAN Foreign and Economic Ministers will meet in October at the sidelines of the 47th ASEAN Summit in October to coordinate the geoeconomics responses.
AGTF intends to produce the ASEAN Integration Report to guide the geoeconomics approaches of ASEAN in this turbulent world.
The world is in a once-in-a-generation crisis, the more ASEAN coordinates among its member
states, the better the ASEAN nations would thrive together.