ASEAN: AFTA and other Free Trade Agreements - Development and Impact on the International Automotive Industry

Diploma Thesis from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 2,0, University of Applied Sciences Constanze, language: English, abstract: This thesis tackles the topic of AFTA and its impact on the automotive world for ASEAN and Non-ASEAN member countries. It also emphasizes the importance of the growing economic regionalism in Asia. The first section set the basics by explaining what is ASEAN and the ASEAN free trade area. The second section describes the automotive background of AFTA member countries and their automotive tariff structure, before and after AFTA was implemented. The third section handles free trade agree-ments of ASEAN or bilateral ones with ASEAN members. The fourth and final section draws a picture of the future, in forecasting scenarios based on information in previous chapters. The paper concludes with an outline of ASEAN free trade agreement's outcomes and future prospects for the automotive industry. AFTA may just be a steppingstone to wider automotive markets but that is likely to go beyond ASEAN intra-regional trade. This is relevant as it is becoming intertwined with the world's economy and affecting it in the upcoming years.