Last week, I spoke at a conference in Hong Kong that included the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Dr. Stanley Fischer, the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Brigadier General Lee Hsien-loong, the Foreign Minister of Thailand, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, academic economists, and regional money managers. A spirit of optimism pervaded the conference, an air of confidence that the recovery of Southeast Asia's economy has begun and that, this time, economic growth will be enduring, if perhaps a bit slower than before the crisis. Enthusiastic Philippine participation in AFTA and the other forms of regional economic integration would lock the Philippines into a region that is poised to resume dynamic growth on a more stable basis than in the past. It would be positioning itself strongly to catch this second wind. In this light, a retreat into protectionism as a response to the crisis does not make much sense.
Protectionism is a dead-end street.
It restricts choices and increases costs for consumers. It will only make the country that resorts to it fall farther and farther behind its neighbors. On the other hand, an integrated market on a regional scale opens up larger opportunities for countries and industries in it, opportunities to sell their products and acquire production inputs at less cost,, for the benefit of all. Countries and industries around the world see this. We can see it not only in the most advanced case of the European Union.