CHIANG RAI, Thailand -- Finance ministers and central bankers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will push to finalize an Asian trade megadeal by the end of this year, according to a draft declaration for their Friday meeting here obtained by Nikkei.
ASEAN leaders had hoped to reach agreement on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership -- a 16-country trade pact that also includes Japan, China and India -- sometime last year. But India's resistance to scrapping tariffs and other roadblocks stood in the way, and they gave up on this goal at a November summit in Singapore.
