Trade facilitation between Southeast Asian nations to lower the cost of doing business in the region will top the agenda at this month's meeting of Asian economic ministers, Malaysia said.

Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said trade facilitation initiatives are critical in the process of creating a regional single market among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) member states.

Malaysia will host the week-long Asean economic ministers' meeting which begins August 21.

Rafidah told Bernama that Asean needs to develop measures to further cut the cost of doing business in the region amid growing competition from China and India.

She added that Malaysia will also emphasise the need for private sector participation to help in the shift towards Asean economic integration.

"Their role is critical as they are the ones who will eventually benefit from these integration initiatives," Rafidah said.

Rafidah said the focus of the economic ministers' meeting will be on achieving a truly free market through the Asean Free Trade Area (Afta).

Afta was established in January 1992 to eliminate trade barriers among Asean states and to fuse the regions' economies - with a market of some half a billion people - into a single production base.

Fast track measures

The ministers will also discuss issues related to the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme, involving the transfer of products that are still not integrated into the scheme by some member countries, Bernama said.

The list of products includes sugar, rice and petrochemicals. Under the CEPT, levies on a wide range of products traded within the region has to be reduced to no more than 5.0 percent.

Rafidah said the ministers will discuss measures to fast track the realisation of the Asean Economic Community from 2020 to 2015.

"This includes developing a comprehensive blueprint to integrate all the existing initiatives such as Afta, the Asean Framework Agreement on Services and the Asean Investment Area and integration of the priority sectors," she said.

The 10-member Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.