Experts said, the forecast was further reinforced by regional trade, which rose to 3.5 trillion USD in 2023 from 2.3 trillion USD in 2015, helping raise per capita income significantly. This reflects ASEAN’s persistent commitment to becoming an open economic region for global trade and investment. The experts noted that, ASEAN is one of the very few regions in the world, where the bloc’s trade is almost as large as its GDP. The bloc’s GDP stood at 2.5 trillion USD in 2015, and soared to 3.8 trillion USD last year. The biggest component of trade is not its trade with China or the US, but intra-Asian trade, which is somewhere close to 800 trillion USD. Besides, ASEAN's trade with the rest of the world has also grown, which is the uniqueness of economies within the bloc. Notably, in the global south, ASEAN is also the largest recipient of foreign direct investments totaling about 230 billion USD currently. It is forecasted that, the global supply chain of companies with low carbon footprints and high-value activities, is more likely to be in ASEAN countries in the coming years, the experts noted./.