A timetable, or what President of the Philippines Benigno Aquino III at the conference's final plenary session called a "roadmap," which is needed for a strengthened economic community, must take shape.

Regional trade has not been the best between ASEAN countries because of the lack of special economic zones in individual countries, preventing them from producing goods and services at a lower cost. Alarmingly, as Fernandes pointed out, the additional absence of a unified visa and passport system and a regional stock market indirectly makes doing business more difficult.

In June 2012, the International Finance Corp. and the World Bank Group did not rank Myanmar among 185 countries in its Doing Business project. Singapore topped the list, while Malaysia and Thailand were the 12th and 18th respectively. Additionally, five ASEAN countries were positioned in the top 40 in the sub-category of "trading across borders."

One area where regional integration has literally taken off is the industry Fernandes knows best.

"It's an assorted group of companies from the private industry pushing the authorities to say we are looking for a common aviation policy—they have to facilitate business, not the other way around," Fernandes said.

Still, the executive sees the wave of nationalism and protectionism dominant in the beliefs of ASEAN countries not as methods of survival but rather self-defeating. What is needed, Mahbubani argues, is strength in reciprocity between the region's superpowers—China, India and Japan—and ASEAN. Mahbubani said, "ASEAN provides the oxygen for Southeast Asia. It has breathed oxygen into a region to [reach] its current status."

Long-term vision

At a session entitled Vision for East Asia's Networked Future and broadcast live by Bloomberg Television, the question posed to the distinguished panelists was, "How can East Asia implement its long-term strategy for strong networked trade and ASEAN integration?"

Yorihiko Kojima, Chairman of the Board of the Japan-based Mitsubishi Corp., stated that there is greater importance for Asia to facilitate trade relationships in the future. He remarked that ASEAN has grown in part because of development among nations, growing competitiveness among companies as well as a strict multi-developmental framework that ensures progress.

Kojima's colleague in the corporate world, Harish Manwani, CEO of Unilever, Singapore, said, "The purpose of ASEAN coming together as a bloc is regionally leveraged, globally relevant, and locally important." Later he added, "We do not want a system without an effective economy of scale. A regional supply chain is needed for ASEAN."

"FDI [foreign direct investment] is largely driven by how effective the supply chain is," said Tarek Sultan Al Essa, Chairman and Managing Director of the Kuwait-based logistics company Agility. "ASEAN needs to look at soft supply chain problems." He concluded by pointing out that the pace of change is going to accelerate and in eliminating the possibility of ASEAN being left behind, the bloc must move quickly to reap the benefits of this expected reformation.

Kittiratt Na-Ranong, Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, countered that trade in ASEAN is occurring at a very high level, 70 percent of the total volume manifested as intra-trade. With the ease of doing business streamlined, medium- and large-scale economic activities will be carried out with more efficiency. Currently, labor costs for companies being proactive in their growth and engaging in various initiatives for expansion are low, but as the cost of living for the 600 million plus individuals within ASEAN increases and economies improve, there will be a gradual shift to higher-cost industries, as this is the nature of the beast.

John Rice, Vice Chairman of General Electric and Co-chair of the World Economic Forum on East Asia, did his best to sum up the event at the closing plenary session. "There is work to be done in East Asia. It is about balance, balancing the need for speed and understanding that small can become big—this event has created hundreds of ambassadors for Myanmar when people go back to their country."

(Reporting from Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar)

The author is a Cairo-based journalist and editor

Email us at: yanwei@bjreview.com