Jakarta (VNA) - The formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the year-end will not impact Malaysia ’s indust♛rialised building system (IBS), said economist Joseph Incalcaterra from the Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).

The IBS was designed to reduce the number of workers, especially foreigners, and increase the construction quality. According to Incalcaterra, the AEC promotes free movement of labour across the region but only focuses on skilled labour. Unskilled labour, including most in the construction workforce, falls outside of AEC's scope, he said. Malaysian industry players have recently raised concerns that the AEC would open up foreign labour flows into the country, thus slowing the IBS implementation among the developers. However, analysts said that the free movement of labour would result in cheaper workforce for Malaysia . To spur the construction industry, in last September, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak launched an IBS Centre office that was set up under the five-year Construction Industry Transformation Programme (CITP). The CITP, spearheaded by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and Works Ministry, is aimed at transforming construction into a modern, highly productive and sustainable industry by 2020. The programme is also to enable Malaysian companies to compete locally and globally with international players while enjoying continued growth.-VNA