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ree movement of goods. Apparently, AFTA, which was initiated by six ASEAN members in January 1992, has been created 'a€|to increase ASEAN's competitiveness through trade and investment liberalization, and closer economic cooperation.' (Cuyvers & Tummers, 2007). After AFTA has been created, ASEAN member states have built important development in terms of lowering of intra-regional tariffs through the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme for AFTA. Also, almost 100 percent of the products in the CEPT Inclusion List (IL) of ASEAN countries have been brought down to the 0-5 percent tariff range. This shows that Cambodia has played very important in the region since the other nation states can transfer their products into Cambodia with very low tariff rates. For instance, Thailand can export their clothes into Cambodia easier than it was in the 1990s because Cambodia was not the member of AFTA yet. In addition, in case if Cambodia is not a member of ASEAN, ASEAN states would have to pay tax as usual in order to trade with Cambodia; therefore, ASEAN has found a lot of benefits from Cambodia.

The free flow of investment is another point which illustrates that Cambodia plays a vital role in ASEAN economy. Noticeably, there are a few agreements which focus on the investments in ASEAN such as 'a€|the Framework Agreement on the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA), 1998, while investment protection is accorded under a separate agreement i.e. the ASEAN Agreement for the Promotion and Protection of Investment, 1987 or commonly referred to as ASEAN Investment Guarantee Agreement (IGA).' ('Asean economic community blueprint [Electronic version],' 2007). However, those agreements have been enriched and combined into the ASEAN Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (ACIA) to meet challenges of increasing competition for foreign direct investment (FDI). 'With ACIA, both domestic investors and foreign investors in ASEAN stand to gain from greater liberalization in investment and increased investment protection.' (ASEAN-Secretariat, 2010). So far, Cambodia has approved the ACIA along with other seven members, comprising Brunei Darussalam, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore and Viet Nam. After Cambodia joint the agreement, currently, the investments in Cambodia have increased dramatically in manufacturing goods and services. Vietnam, for instance, has invested in telecommunication service, known as Metfone. Metfone has widely spread its service to everywhere in Cambodia together with the urban and the rural areas. Moreover, with the ACIA, Cambodia is required to increase the protection to Metfone, and also to provide Metfone a more transparent, coherent, and expectable investment rules, regulations, policies and procedures. Similarly, not only the Vietnamese company -Metfone-, but also the other companies in the region are also capable in investing in Cambodia and get the same treat. As a result, in the investment field, ASEAN would find a lot advantages for integrating with Cambodia.

To sum up, Cambodia does place itself as an important role in economic sectors in ASEAN. Free flow of goods and investment are the two factors among the five which Cambodia can share effectively with other members. Without Cambodia, the economic efficiency and specialization of ASEAN in the international community might become weaker since it applies to a proverb-two heads are better than one head. Meaning that, with the par