311. ASEAN and the US continued to make strides in the area of environment cooperation during the year. The Project Steering Committee meeting of the Environmental Improvement Project (EIP) had its second meeting on September 23 1995 in Bali, Indonesia. This Committee comprises ASEAN Senior Officials on Environment (ASOEN), representatives from the ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry Working Group for Sustainable Development, American Chambers of Commerce, and representatives from the ASEAN Secretariat, EIP, AEP and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Project Steering Committee reviewed the progress and accomplishments of the past year and discussed and approved the draft work plan for 1996.

312. Significant progress has been made in the projects under the EIP. Under policy and institutional development, a workshop on market-based instruments for pollution prevention was convened. The workshop will assist the Thai Government in identifying appropriate market based instruments (MBIs) for use as incentives to promote environmental management and waste minimization.

313. Seminars on alternatives to ozone depleting CFCs were conducted in the ASEAN Member Countries. Indonesian government officials went on a study tour to the United States to observe cleaner production and pollution prevention programmes under the ASEAN-US EIP.

314. During the year under review, Clean Technology and Environmental Management (CTEM) Information Centres were established in Jakarta, Manila, and Singapore. The centres aim to promote, market and train ASEAN industries on the use of cleaner technologies.

315. In the area of technology transfer and training, 26 Waste Reduction Assessments were completed in the first half of 1995. Four pulp and paper mills in Indonesia and a number of hospitals in the Philippines were assessed for waste reduction under this programme. As part of this programme, an industrial environmental management training programme for Malaysia's manufacturing sector's senior management and production staff is being developed with assistance from the Environmental Management and Research Society of Malaysia.

316. ASEAN and the US are still exploring ways of developing social and cultural cooperation. The possibility of using the Fulbright Scholarship as a means of developing people-to-people cultural exchange programmes under the ASEAN-US Dialogue Relationship is being examined. This will be discussed further with a paper on this topic at the 13th ASEAN-US Dialogue Meeting in the latter half of 1996.

317. Under the ASEAN-USTR (United States Trade Representative) Relations, the two sides continued to discuss the plan for the implementation of the US-ASEAN Alliance for Mutual Growth (AMG). Since its establishment, the AMG has focused on the six programme areas listed in Table 22.

318. An AEM-USTR Meeting held in March 1996 saw the exchange of views on the need to promote greater involvement of the private sector in trade and investment promotion as well as in providing inputs to the policy dialogue.