It is now official: the Asean Community's Post 2025 vision will be extended by another ten years from 2035 to 2045. Asean Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn revealed the 20-year vision in Bangkok last week, much to the surprise of diplomats and the local audience. The decision was taken at the 7th meeting of the High-Level Task Force on the Asean Community's Post-2025 Vision (HLTF-ACV) in March 19-20 in Belitung, Indonesia.
The two-day event, which was co-chaired by Indonesia and Malaysia, made considerable progress on the core elements of the future of the Asean community beyond 2025 for the next ten years. As a risk-averse grouping, the task force finally agreed that a 20-year vision was necessary, with a mid-term review in 2035. Indeed, this marks the first time the 56-year-old organisation has come up with an unusually long vision at a pivotal moment when global geopolitics and geo-economics are extremely fluid. Kudos must go to the current Asean chair, which has insisted from the very beginning that 2045 should be the new timeframe to figure out how to make Asean become more relevant and resilient.
