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Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is maturing into a regional economic community and set to form the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) bringing together 10 nations into a single market and production base by the end of 2015. If the body succeeds, the region could have a stronger political voice and better position to negotiate trade deals, said, Smithfield in its latest report entitled, "The Outlook for the ASEAN Economies - a compendium of investment views".

Smithfield is a financial and corporate communications consultancy firm.

"With limited growth in other parts of the world, ASEAN is growing in importance globally in the U.S., Middle East and Europe. There have been significant improvements in infrastructure and changes to business strategy. Access to a young working age population provides labor and skilled employees and low production costs means that trade with ASEAN is expected to sour in the coming years," the report said.

Smithfield added that in the years since the crisis of 1997/98, corporate governance and regulation has come a long way. There has been a change of culture with companies focusing on returns for shareholders. For instance, technology suffered a lot in the sell off and is now looking more attractively valued,

"We are giving more importance to companies which will become market leaders, with a particular f......................

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