The agriculture and food industry is crucial for most member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and essential for achieving the ASEAN Economic Community’s (AEC) vision of a seamless market with free-flowing goods and services. However, the agri-food industry encounters several complex challenges, such as regulatory inconsistencies, a lack of harmonised standards, and insufficient public-private coordination. Another challenge for ASEAN’s emerging economies like Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam (CLV) is implementing further harmonisation measures to promote sustainable and resilient agricultural value chains.

Building on the successful implementation of its first phase, the ASEAN AgriTrade II project, in collaboration with stakeholders and partners in ASEAN, aims to address this challenge by ensuring that ASEAN Member States (AMS) implement harmonisation measures to meet sustainability and quality standards in regional and global agricultural value chains. This initiativewill open new markets and provide new incentives to the private sector for import and export.