Foreword

The ASEAN Statistical Yearbook 2001 is the first comprehensive statistical publication of the ASEAN Secretariat. It covers a wide range of statistics including macroeconomic, trade, investment, tourism, transportation and communication, population, demographic, social and environmental statistics.

The Yearbook provides an authoritative source for ASEAN statistics on key sectors in all ASEAN countries. The statistics in the Yearbook reflect significant fundamental and structural changes that ASEAN economies and their key sectors have undergone over the past decade as a result of national developments, regional cooperation and globalization, as well as the region's economic, social and demographic profile. To facilitate cross-country comparison, some figures are presented by grouping the member-countries according to the availability of comparable statistics. Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand constitute one group, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia. Lao PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam make up the other.

Despite some limitations, particularly with respect to data availability and harmonisation of concepts, methods and definitions, we hope that the Yearbook provides a useful overview of ASEAN economic and social developments. Efforts continue to be made to improve on the availability and timeliness of these and other statistics and to further harmonize concepts and definitions for greater comparability. Footnotes, definitions and a glossary are provided to facilitate understanding.

We intend to make this an annual publication of ASEAN and would therefore value your comments on this inaugural issue.

RODOLFO C. SEVERINO JR.
Secretary General of ASEAN
Jakarta, March 2002