ASEAN's free trade area

This booklet deals mainly with AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area) and its impact on the automotive industry, providing forecasting scenarios trying to picture the future. ASEAN has a lot of potential, which keeps growing; offering automotive manufacturers opportunities but also presenting threats. The implementation of AFTA and its tariff reduction or elimination is already affecting the automotive sector all over the world. For a better understanding of the automotive world in Asia and AFTA’s impact, the automotive background and economy of each ASEAN member (in total 10 members) is described and illustrated, before and after the full implementation of AFTA, within ASEAN and then its spreading to further markets and continents. Interesting details like an overview of ASEAN’s history and free trade agreements with other countries, China’s greed in this specific field or an emerging India is given to surround, complement and spice up the topic. Anyone who is interested in the automotive sector, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), its free trade area bringing along challenges for all car manufacturers in Asia would be pleased to go through these pages that go far beyond Southeast Asian borders.