The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) may not meet its deadline for full integration by December this year as obstacles in doing cross-border business are still prevalent in the region. The view of Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) CEO Abdul Farid Alias was quoted by Malaysia’s Star newspaper on October 23.  Farid said the intention of the AEC is to promote free movement of trade, labour, and capital, however, the business environment differs greatly from country to country, more needs to be done to address the matter.  The AEC is conditional on the successful implementation of several high-priority measures, such as customs integration, transport integration and financial integration.  Another key point of contention among the 10 ASEAN member nations is the reduction of tariffs relating to cross-border trade. Four of the countries – Cambodia, Laos Myanmar, and Vietnam – had requested for a time extension to meet this criteria. Regarding to labour mobility, the expert said it is a key problem for financial institutions with regional aspirations. For instant, Maybank wants to transfer people across the region much more quickly. It will help the bank to promote the regional organisation that it wants to build. The chief executive officer stressed that more cooperation is needed among financial regulators in the bloc, with the ultimate objective of creating a uniform regulatory framework. He said every financial institution regulatory framework in the region differs from one country to another. Aside from Singapore, which leads the way in the transaction of Basel III-compliant financial instruments, other ASEAN nations are still lagging behind in terms of compliance due to the uneven growth rates within the countries’ respective banking industries. ASEAN has a population of about 620 million people, generating a total gross domestic product (GDP) of about 2.4 trillion USD which accounts for 5.5 percent the world’s GDP. The bloc’s economy enjoyed a growth pace of 5.6 per annum.-VNA