Manila: South East Asian nations should advance their 2010 deadline for dismantling all tariff barriers to cope with rising competition for investments, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretary-general Rodolfo Severino proposed on May 29.

"To wait for 2010 when the rest of the world is marching on might be too long," he said in Manila.

He declined to suggest a fresh deadline, saying this should be worked out by the member states but pointed out that "benchmarks" could be set to speed up a free trade area covering 500 million people in the region.

The ASEAN launched a tariff cutting exercise in 1993 to forge the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).

The AFTA plan reached a milestone in January 2002 when the six older members of the group and the original signatories of AFTA, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, dropped their tariffs on trade with one another to zero to five percent.

The six countries account for more than 96 percent of trade in the region.

The other members of ASEAN are Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The target of a minimum of zero to five percent tariffs was accelerated twice partly in reaction to a financial crisis in 1997 that dragged the region to its worst recession in history.

ASEAN leaders had decided on a 2010 deadline for total abolition of tariffs on intra- ASEAN trade by the senior members.

The target for the newer members is 2015.