INGENIEUR
COVER FEATURE
Promotion of Mutual Recognition Arrangement
For Mobility of Engineering Services Professionals
BENCHMARKING TO
INTERNATIONAL BEST
PRACTICES
By Ir. Rocky H.T. Wong
This paper is based on the author’s presentation at the Bali Consolidated Roundtable Discussion on
September 22, 2014. As there is extensive use of acronyms, a list of various terms and organisations
are provided at the end of the paper.
M
utual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) is
for cross border trade, particularly for
stakeholders in business. It includes
goods that come under WTO’s TBT principles
(meaning products that are standards centric), and
for services; either regulated professional services
(qualifications/experience deterministic), or (of
public interest related) trade-based engineering/
technology services, which are skills/competency
certification/licensing dependent.
In ASEAN, there are MRAs on goods. One such
is the ASEAN Electrical and Electronic Equipment
MRA (EEE MRA). This commenced in 2000 and
was realised in 2002. Since coming into force
and operationalised, the EEE MRA gave rise to
the ASEAN Harmonised EEE Regulatory Regime
(AHEEERR) Agreement by the end of 2005. This
was the first step towards Regional Coherence to
realising the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) post 2015.
With GATS in place (underpinning WTO) that
entered into force on January 1, 1995; ASEAN,
created a GATS-plus model which formulated
the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services
(AFAS) and set about developing various MRAs on
regulated Professional Services.
Note: It is worthwhile noting that ASEAN, since
1995 - with both CEPT (underpinning ASEAN Free
Trade Agreement (AFTA) established 1992), and
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VOL 55 JUNE 2013
Source: acpecc.net
AFAS; the groundwork for preferential (free) intra
ASEAN trade, in both goods and services, was
established. The formation and actualization of the
ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was the logical
progression.
ASEAN MRA on Engineering Services
First such MRA, concluded in 2005, was the
ASEAN MRA on Engineering Services (specifically
for CPC 8672 only – Engineering Services:
similar to BEM defined “professional engineering
services”). This gave rise to Government to
Government recognised/ASEAN registered grade