ASEAN and Russia recently agreed to enhance and widen economic cooperation at the 10th ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM)-Russia Consultations held in September 2021, including by adopting a revised ASEAN-Russia Trade and Investment Cooperation Work Program for the 2021-25 period.
At the meetings, ASEAN and Russia agreed on a revised ASEAN-Russia Trade and Investment Cooperation Roadmap (the “Roadmap”), which is a high-level agreement setting the goals for trade between the two parties.
The ASEAN-Russia Trade and Investment Cooperation Work Program (the “Program”) is an associated agreement – also updated at the meetings – that guides the implementation of the Roadmap.
Here, we look at the details of the Program and its direction for the upcoming 2021-25 period.
The Program is an implementation agreement in support of the Roadmap’s broader goals. The Roadmap’s main goal is to enhance economic cooperation to address emerging challenges and opportunities for trade and investment between ASEAN and Russia. To do so, the Roadmap seeks to:
The agreement describes the Program as a “living document” subject to review on a regular basis. The following is an overview of the six tasks included in the most recent publicly available Program from August 2020.
The objective of the high-level policy dialogue is to provide overall policy direction to enhance ASEAN-Russia economic relations and to promote ASEAN-Russia cooperation and strengthen regional integration.
The main activity under this objective is to organize annual AEM-Russia Consultations.
There are four objectives for consultations at the Senior Economic Officials level. These are:
Activities under these objectives include organizing Senior Economic Officials meetings, ensuring the timely delivery of the Roadmap, and exploring joint ASEAN-Russia responses.
There are 14 objectives for sectoral dialogues between ASEAN and Russian officials, the most of any category in the Work Program. These are:
This article was first published by AseanBriefing which is produced by Dezan Shira & Associates. The firm assists foreign investors throughout Asia from offices across the world, including in in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, India, and Russia. Readers may write to [email protected].
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