From Samirul Ariff Othman

Under Malaysia’s chairmanship, Asean in 2025 advanced an ambitious slate of priority economic deliverables (PEDs).

Some moved the needle. Others stayed in beta mode. As always in Asean, the critical test is not how many communiqués were issued — but whether cables were laid, protocols signed, and regulatory friction actually eased.

To understand where Asean truly delivered — and where it merely launched more acronyms — it helps to look at sector by sector.

What actually drove integration in 2025? 

This is a clear sector-by-sector look at where Asean delivered real economic gains — and where it just launched more acronyms.

First, the wins. The negotiations on the Asean Trade in Goods Agreement (Atiga) upgrade has reached conclusion, with signing targeted for the October summit.

This matters. It updates rules of origin, digitises customs processes, and pushes deeper trade facilitation — practical deliverables that cut costs for exporters.

Alongside this, the Asean–China FTA 3.0 was also concluded, locking in the region’s biggest trade relationship with new provisions for digital trade, green economy, and supply chain resilience.

These two agreements alone will affect a meaningful share of intra-Asean and Asean–China trade. This is real progress.

QRs, not declarations: The real infrastructure of trust 

Regional trust is built on payments, data, and connectivity — not communiqués or ceremonies.

On digital economy, the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (Defa) has reached “substantial conclusion” — a bureaucratic phrase, but one that, if finalised with robust provisions, can be transformational.

Defa aims to harmonise digital rules across Asean — on data flows, paperless trade, e-signatures, cyber norms, and trust services.

The business case is clear: with a US$2 trillion digital opportunity on the horizon, Asean needs consistent, interoperable rules to unlock digital trade and AI‑enabled services.

Add this to the progress in regional payment connectivity — with QR codes now linking up in real time across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam — and you have an example of integration that is already touching the lives of tourists, micro, small and medium-size businesses, and cross-border gig workers.

Beyond the headline deals, several “foundational PEDs” were launched — the Asean Framework Agreement on Competition, the AFISS Framework on semiconductor supply chains, the Startup Ignite programme, and sustainability toolkits like the Asean Taxonomy version 3 and Sustainable Investment Guidelines.

These are institution‑building exercises. They show the right direction — especially for green energy, digital trust, and supply chain resiliency — but their economic impact will depend entirely on what Asean does between 2026 and 2030. Frameworks don’t build plants. They guide them.

Digital rules, real results: The new architecture of Asean integration 

The Defa, Atiga, and QR networks are laying cables for the future. But services liberalisation and green transition still lag.

Now, the bottlenecks. Services liberalisation under the Asean Trade in Services Agreement (Atisa) regime still lags.

Negative‑list scheduling is sound policy, but many member states have yet to submit full, binding schedules of non‑conforming measures.

In critical sectors such as healthcare and logistics, delays in listing domestic restrictions continue to obscure true market access. This limits investor certainty and hampers the promise of integrated regional services markets.

Data governance is another Achilles heel. Without interoperable standards for cross-border data flows — and mutual recognition pathways between differing data regimes — Defa will remain a treaty of good intentions. Investors, especially in AI and cloud services, are watching this space closely.

The green economy agenda is advancing — on paper. Asean has a functioning green taxonomy, cross-border power trade initiatives under the Asean Power Grid Enhanced memorandum of understanding, and policy papers on EVs, critical minerals, and sustainable finance.

But the gaps lie in implementation: inadequate transmission infrastructure, slow financing pipelines, and insufficient regional guarantees. As of now, few cross-border renewable projects have reached final investment decisions.

So, what’s the scorecard? PEDs that changed the rules (like Atiga and Defa) or connected real-time systems (like QR payment linkages) are the ones delivering immediate impact.

PEDs that launched frameworks without operational follow‑through — on AI safety, semiconductors, or green investments — are valuable but symbolic. They need budgets, timelines, and pipelines to count.

In short, Asean has not failed to act — but it must now deliver beyond documents.

Trade protocols, interlinked payment systems, interoperable data rules, and enforceable schedules are the hardware of integration. Talk-shops don’t move containers. QR codes do.

Samirul Ariff Othman is an economist, international relations analyst, adjunct lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, and a senior consultant with Global Asia Consulting. He is also an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.