In the establishment of the ASEAN Community by 2015, one of the main challenges of regional integration is the narrowing of the development gap between the old ASEAN-6 and the new members, namely: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV). The development gap is manifested by disparity in per capita income; human development, such as life expectancy and literacy rate; the “digital divide”; the state of infrastructure development and the level of competitiveness.

To realize ASEAN’s vision of a stable, prosperous and peaceful ASEAN Community, the ASEAN Leaders adopted the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) in 2004 as ASEAN’s special program to integrate the newer Member Countries into the ASEAN economic mainstream.

A six-year (2002-2008) Work Plan for the IAI was drafted and was approved with focus on four areas, namely, Infrastructure Development, Human Resource Development, ICT, and Promoting Regional Economic Integration in the CLMV countries. It has since been expanded to include three more areas, namely, tourism, poverty reduction and improvement in the quality of life, and projects of general coverage (areas that cut across all the other areas such as language training).  At the Mid-term Review of the IAI Workplan, the shortcoming cited was that the current Work Plan has not taken into account the needs of pockets of under-development in the ASEAN-6 countries, including the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) and Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT).

The CLMV countries have organized themselves into the IAI Task Force. The IAI Task Force regularly meets to review the implementation of the projects under the IAI programme. Contributions to the IAI are sourced from the original ASEAN-6 Countries and financial and technical assistance from ASEAN dialogue partners.  In 2006, the ASEAN Directors-General of ASEAN-6 were formally included as members of the IAI Task Force. The Meeting of the 28th IAI Task Force will be held at the PICC in Manila on 26 July 2007.