US Companies View ASEAN As A Key Growth Area

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 17 (Bernama) -- US companies viewed the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a key growth area given the robust potentials it offered. US-ASEAN Business Council Chief Representative, Ezani Mansor, said one of the potentials offered was the high composition of young population which would attract technology-based business such as e-commerce. "Currently, almost 40 per cent of the population in ASEAN are under 24 years old," he said at the ASEAN Economic Integration Forum 2016 here Thursday. He was one of the panellists at the forum. Ezani said this factor, coupled with the projection of 400 million middle-income earners to make up the region's population in the next five to six years, made ASEAN a prime area for business opportunities. He said with the large young population, ASEAN has been a good place for start-up businesses which were valued at US$10 billion (US$1=RM4.12) currently. "We hope to see the ecosystem for start-ups to be further improved," he said. Last year, bilateral trade between the US and ASEAN totalled US$227 billion while US investments in ASEAN amounted to US$12.19 billion. The two-day forum, beginning yesterday, was organised by the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, World Trade Institute as well as other foreign higher education institutions including University of Oxford and Switzerland's University of Bern. The forum aimed to analyse the prospects and challenges of economic integration in ASEAN as well as to discuss the socio and political impacts of Economic integration to the ASEAN members. -- BERNAMA