INGENIEUR
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ordination across many sectors and providing details on the approach to ensure success.
SEAMLESS LOGISTICS
The region’ s customs and logistics costs remain far higher than international benchmarks. Improving logistics competitiveness will be crucial if ASEAN is to maintain its recent strong manufacturing growth as wages rise across the region. The strategic objectives and initiatives for seamless logistics are outlined in Figure 5.
Lower supply chain costs in each ASEAN Member State. At present, there are large divergences among ASEAN Member States across different areas of logistics, including green logistics. The aim is to lower logistics costs by drawing on appropriate metrics for trading across borders.
Improve speed and reliability of supply chains in each ASEAN Member State: Similar to the cost of logistics, the speed and reliability of logistics in terms of time spent in ports, customs, and in-land transport need to be improved considerably by assessing various bottlenecks in the supply-chain process. Currently, ASEAN Members States’ speed of logistics based on World Bank’ s metrics for trading across borders shows divergence in performance and they are well below global benchmarks( e. g. the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD average.)
Initiative 8: Strengthen ASEAN Competitiveness through Enhanced Trade Routes and Logistics.
This initiative aims to conduct an analysis of time and costs for different stages of priority trade routes in ASEAN in order to identify bottlenecks. There is a lack of detailed information on key logistic networks in ASEAN. For example, the World Bank Logistics Performance Index( LPI) has a country-specific focus( rather than regional focus) and lacks granularity on specific bottlenecks. The Japan External Trade Organisation( JETRO) ASEAN Logistics Network map was an attempt to provide more granular information on seven priority trade routes in ASEAN, but has not been updated recently or expanded to cover more of ASEAN’ s trade routes. The lack of detailed logistical information for ASEAN makes it difficult to identify specific bottlenecks and prioritise actions.
The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint 2025 and the ASEAN Strategic Transport Plan 2016-2025 have called for the construction of a database covering the ASEAN land transport network and conducting time release studies to measure the time required for goods vehicles crossing the border. There is an opportunity for MPAC 2025 to support this by working with academic institutions, multilateral organisations, the private sector and Dialogue Partners to conduct an analysis of time and costs for different stages of the trade route and identify bottlenecks. To establish the database, the first step is to identify the priority trade lanes or economic corridors to be analysed under the database. Priority commodities then need to be selected for monitoring. Selection criteria could include the relevance of the corridors and products for trade flows, their importance to the private sector, their relevance to multiple ASEAN Member States, and the coverage of both maritime and land corridors.
To ensure continuity in the development and updating of the database on a regular basis, identification of research partners will be an essential component of this initiative. As a step towards developing this database, the pilot ASEAN Custom Transit System project involving Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, as identified under the Senior Transport Officials Meeting( STOM) could be a starting point. This can then be used to inform priority reform areas over time. The information generated through the database could then be made widely available to the private sector, as well as the countries’ logistics councils and national logistics industry associations, to inform decisions on how to clear bottlenecks in relation to various speed and cost issues.
Initiative 9: Enhance Supply Chain Efficiency through Addressing Key Chokepoints.
This initiative focuses on developing a supply chain framework that will provide a holistic measure of supply chain performance in ASEAN. It would begin by identifying specific trade
68 VOL 71 JULY- SEPTEMBER 2017