Toolkit

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide government officials of ASEAN Member States, who are tasked to act as National Contact Points or Focal Points for the purpose of the ASEAN Solutions for Investments, Services and Trade or ‘ASSIST’, as well as business and private sector representatives, with a set of training materials to train the potential users of ASSIST, on how to use ASSIST to lodge a complaint or to interact with ASEAN Governments in relation to intra-ASEAN cross-border trade issues.

The aim of ASSIST is to provide a simple means for the ASEAN private sector to address any non-tariff measure, non-tariff barrier, trade irritant or trade problem that may be inhibiting regional trade in goods or services, by raising issues or concerns where integration mechanisms may not appear to be implemented in full or in the spirit of the particular regional agreement at the national level. Currently, ASSIST allows only for complaints related to intra-ASEAN cross-border trade in goods and trade in services related to the implementation of ASEAN economic agreements and within the framework of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).

This toolkit has been developed through the ASEAN Regional Integration Support from the European Union (ARISE) Plus, which is a European Union funded project to support the ASEAN region in trade facilitation and economic integration. The development of this toolkitis based on the request by the ASEAN Senior Economic Officials’Meeting (SEOM) and the ASEAN Trade Facilitation Joint Consultative Committee (ATF-JCC).

Tools
1. Sample PowerPoint Presentation  – PowerPoint explaining what ASSIST is and its structure (i.e., establishment, legal basis, scope, key actors, and key features), and showing the ASSIST process flow through a simplified diagram of the ASSIST mechanism and its associated timeline.
2. ASSIST User Manual for the Private Sector 
 – Manual providing the guidelines and procedures for the ASEAN private sector or ‘ASEAN Enterprise’ of the free-of-charge, online-based and non-binding consultative mechanism ‘ASSIST’.
3. ASSIST Tutorials – For users to familiarize themselves with the mechanics of ASSIST, five step-by-step tutorials were developed based on hypothetical case studies provided in the ASSIST User Manual. The purpose of the tutorials is to help users to better understand the ASSIST process and the role played by the various actors.
4. ASSIST Toolkit (Full version)