ASEAN flag raised in Belgrade – Serbia not using good bilateral relations sufficiently
The Ceremony was co-hosted by the ASEAN Embassies based in Belgrade, Republic of Serbia, namely the Republic of Indonesia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and Malaysia.
ASEAN was established on August 8, 1967, in Bangkok, Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) by the ASEAN founding members, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined ASEAN on January 7, 1984, followed by Lao PDR and Myanmar on July 23, 1997, and Cambodia on April 30, 1999, making up what is today the ten Member States of ASEAN.
Since its establishment, ASEAN has been successful in facilitating the economic prosperity, political stability and security as well as socio-cultural cohesion of the countries in the South East Asian region.
The importance of ASEAN to the world economy is proven by the fact that they cover a market of over 622 million people. This potential market of ASEAN is larger than those of the European Union or North America, said the Ambassador of Indonesia in Belgrade, Harry Richard James Kandou.
The flag raising ceremony was attended by Heads of Missions and representatives from the Asia pacific embassies based in Belgrade and, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, Goran Aleksic, assistant in charge of bilateral relations. Considering the fact that the Serbian delegation consisted of only one member, we wondered how well used the possibilities of cooperation between Serbia and the member states of ASEAN were.
Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and the director of the Asian Studies Institute, Dragana Mitrovic, reminds that Serbia's position as Yugoslavia's successor enables it to benefit from decades of bilateral cooperation with many of the ten member states of ASEAN, some of which are showing great interest in establishing a far more thorough economic cooperation in the areas of trade, tourism, direct investments in our economy, but also education, technological exchange etc.
– Since some of these countries are at the same time the most dynamic world economies and belong to the so-called growing or blooming economies, like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the economic cooperation with them could have a positive effect on the dynamic of the growth of our economy and the diversification of the market and sources of foreign investments – says prof. Dragana Mitrovic for eKapija and adds that, since the removal of sanctions, Myanmar too has become a hotspot of true competition between potential investors from the most developed economies.
Mitrovic believes that this is caused partly by our traditional weaknesses – the separation of science and the competent state institutions and the economy, which results in the lack of proper letters of recommendation, low interest of our business entities for markets outside Europe, the slowness of the existing institutions in realizing the initiatives from these countries, especially when it comes to interdepartmental cooperation, and the generally unfavorable climate in the Serbian economy and its weak capacities for competitive ventures in the world market.
J. Djelic
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