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ASEAN service sector integration:
A work in progress

Summing up, the ASEAN service sector integration,
particularly the program on mobility for skilled labor, is a
work in progress. What the ASEAN has done is laying out the

various programs and measures – AFAS agreements and
modalities, MRAs on certain professions, development of a

proposed AQRF and so on – meant to facilitate integration. But
these programs and measures, drafted in the general context
of trade liberalization, do not necessarily translate into an

integrated service sector region-wide.

Overall, however, one does not need the magnifying

glass of doctoral students to see that services are developing
in a very uneven manner within each member country and
across the region. For example, there are millions of micro

enterprises and hundreds of thousands of small and medium
enterprises in the whole ASEAN that are not exactly tied to

each other in an integrated way as envisioned under AEC 2015.
These enterprises have different technological capacities,
employment levels, capital requirements and so on.

To complicate the situation, the bulk of services
in most of the ASEAN are informal. The informal economy

constitute at least two-thirds of the labor market in all the ASEAN
countries, with the notable exception of Singapore and Brunei,

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