Page 63 - ASEAN-EU Dialogue 2018: Regional and Inter-Regional Economic Cooperation: Identifying Priorities for ASEAN and the EU

commitments in terms of sectoral coverage as well as depth of commitments such as the length
of stay permitted. The second agreement is the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement
(or the ACIA), which grants entry, temporary stay and work authorization to investors,
executives, managers and board members of corporations in the process of committing a
substantial amount of capital or other resources (ASEAN Secretariat, 2018d). The ACIA
balances out the MNP as it covers all sectors where there are investments. But, neither MNP
nor ACIA, apply to individuals seeking employment, temporary or permanent residence, or
citizenship in another AMS (Papademetriou, et. al., 2015). The ACIA, in particular, specifically
applies only to individuals employed by a registered company in the country of origin.

An important question in the movement of skilled workers is their qualifications and the
recognition of these qualifications in other countries. Consequently, in 2014, a common
reference framework that enables comparisons of education qualifications across participating
AMS was put forward to support worker mobility (or the ASEAN Qualification Reference
Framework (AQRF) (ASEAN Secretariat, 2018e). But the framework is to be used for
referencing only in order to establish the relationship between the eight-level AQRF and the
National Qualification Framework (NQF) or qualifications system of participating AMS. As
stated clearly in the web-site, the AQRF acts as an information tool for facilitating the
recognition of qualifications and does not replace the national process of AMS.

Despite the number of initiatives launched, the Strategic Schedule of the AEC 2015, showed
that the action plan specifically focused on two areas only, which is namely the completion of
the MRAs for major professional services and the development of the core competencies for
job/occupational skills required in the priority integration sectors (ASEAN Secretariat, 2018a).
Nevertheless, as in the case of other ASEAN initiatives, implementation is left to each AMS to
undertake. Since the AMS have different capacities and capabilities for implementation,
especially in matters requiring technical expertise, progress in implementation varied
considerably from one AMS to another. For example, in the matter of submission of
notifications of participation after signing the engineering MRA, Lao PDR, Singapore and
Malaysia took less than two years each to submit their respective notifications (Mendoza and
Sugiyarto, 2017). By contrast, Brunei Darussalam, Myanmar, and Cambodia took the longest
at seven, six and five years respectively. Notably, it took Malaysia and Singapore ten years to
complete the process needed for the MRA in the engineering MRA. Since professionals who
wish to work in other AMS need to register in the ASEAN registry for their respective
professions, Table 11.1 shows the number of professionals registered as of 2016.

57