Southeast Asian economic ministers agreed Tuesday to work to integrate 11 industry sectors as part of efforts to create a European-style single market covering their 530 million people by 2020.
Successful integration would be "an important catalyst in the realisation of the Asean Economic Community," they said in a statement after two days of talks.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) wants to achieve integration before 2010 in wood, rubber, automotive, textile, electronics, agriculture, information technology, fisheries, health care, air travel and tourism.
Indonesia's Trade Minister Rini Suwandi said economic integration was needed for Asean to compete with other regional economic blocs. "We need to achieve this fast and smoothly because now the world has been divided into regional blocs - in Africa, in Latin America and the European Union is expanding with an additional 10 members in May," she told reporters.
"We have decided to finalise a road map, which, among other things, calls for harmonisation of standards and customs procedures."
Suwandi said ministers would meet again in Singapore in April to talk about the road map, including the targets and timeframe.
She said ministers were hopeful that some of the 11 sectors could achieve integration before 2005 and all the others in 2008.
The Asean secretariat in Jakarta will co-ordinate the efforts, she said.
At their summit in Bali last October Asean leaders endorsed a plan to achieve a single production base and market by 2020, with a free flow of goods, services and investments in the region.
Singapore and Thailand called at the time for the process to be speeded up.
In Bali the Southeast Asian leaders also launched the first phase of a free trade agreement to be fully developed with China by 2010 and signed a pact with India to set up a similar arrangement by 2016.
Ministers Tuesday also met European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy to discuss the EU's initiative for economic co-operation with Asean, dubbed the Trans-Regional EU-Asean Trade Initiative (TREATI).
In a joint statement the ministers and Lamy said they were working on key priority areas such as trade facilitation and promotion, investment and technical barriers to trade.
Speaking after the meeting, Lamy said he and the ministers agreed that stalled negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) should resume as soon as possible.