Jakarta. ASEAN’s upcoming upgrades to its decades-long trade pact ATIGA is expected to clear the way for a better dispute settlement mechanism, according to the bloc’s senior official.

The newly expanded grouping has what it calls the ATIGA, short for the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement. This pact, which already entered into force in 2010, has removed virtually all tariffs slapped on the goods traded between the Southeast Asian economies. ASEAN has been working on upgrading the ATIGA to further simplify the process of doing business in the region as the world rushes to offset the US tariff impacts. The group intends to streamline the dispute resolution process. Most members, including Indonesia, have signed the amendments. 

Satvinder Singh, the Deputy Secretary-General for ASEAN Economic Community, recently talked about what to expect from a revamped ATIGA. Singh admitted that the current dispute resolution mechanism, which puts emphasis on arbitration, had set a major challenge in ASEAN’s export-import activities. An arbitration typically involves a third party, chosen by both sides, who will make a binding decision to end the disagreement over the non-tariff barriers.   

“On dispute resolutions, there was always the duty for us to engage in arbitration in the past. Because of who we are in ASEAN, none of us wants to arbitrate with each other. In the upgraded ATIGA, we are thinking of an alternative form of dispute resolution. We are going to embrace mediation,” Singh told a conference on Tuesday.

Mediation is more collaborative in nature, a better fit for the group that is known for its preference to settle disagreements amicably. 

“With mediation, there is no win-or-lose. You sit, discuss, and try to find a solution. That is going to help ASEAN members to come together to settle most of these issues,” Singh said.

The club’s current chair, Malaysia, submitted the second protocol document for the upgraded ATIGA to ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn at the recent Kuala Lumpur talks. Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand have signed the upgraded agreement. Cambodia and Laos inked the treaty “ad referendum”, meaning that it is still subject to further approval in their countries. The signing for Myanmar and Vietnam is slated for this month. The changes will officially take into effect 18 months after the signing process is complete.

Timor-Leste has only joined ASEAN a few weeks ago, but ASEAN had signaled that Dili would eventually be part of all of the bloc’s initiatives -- the ATIGA and other trade pacts included. 

Intra-ASEAN trade totaled $823.1 billion in 2024, representing 21.4 percent of the total export-import activities within the region, the Indonesian government data showed.

Read More: ASEAN Backs Timor-Leste’s Entry into RCEP After Granting Full Membership