KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 27 (Bernama) — ASEAN has truly gained traction as an potentially dynamic economic entity with huge prospects for trade and investment. This will undoubtedly take on greater prominence with the realisation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the end of this year. Undoubtedly, the AEC has created a conducive environment for local companies to increase sales, open operations outside their domestic market and enable sourcing on a region-wide basis. Its significance by being the seventh largest economy in the world with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$2.5 trillion, has attracted more non-ASEAN countries to be dialogue partners with it including Bangladesh and Timor Leste. Realising its potential back then, Australia was the first to come on board as a dialogue partner, quickly followed by China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, India, the United States, Russia, Canada and the European Union. To take this significantly further, ASEAN is in...

As the chair for ASEAN in 2015, Malaysia has initiated a unique opportunity to engage its future talent, and provide a broader perspective on the role of ASEAN. Over 150 students, government representatives and employers attended the official launching of the MY ASEAN Internship programme at Sunway University on Monday. MY ASEAN Internship is a collaboration between the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad (TalentCorp), which seeks to increase overall awareness on ASEAN among the youth in Malaysia. The initiative targets 100 high-achieving students in 2015 to intern at one of the leading partner organisations which have business operations in one or more ASEAN countries. Currently, there are 12 partner organisations participating in the initiative, which are AirAsia, Axiata, BDO, CIMB, Digi, GE, Maybank, Nestle, Securities Commision Malaysia, Sime Darby, Sunway, and ZICOlaw.Throughout the internship period, these...