ABSTRACT
Although very different in terms of culture and ethnicity, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand share some common features. They are the three largest economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which was established in 1967 to promote cooperation amongst its members, and is now on the brink of realizing the goal of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), established on December 31, 2015. Thus, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand collaborate with one another as part of ASEAN, and there are flows of labor amongst them, especially between Indonesia and Malaysia. Their collaboration can be seen in the establishment of a regional growth triangle—the 1993 Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT)—to encourage tripartite economic cooperation amongst the southern part of Thailand, the northern part of Malaysia, and Indonesia’s Sumatra Island. The aim of the IMT-GT is to maximize the utilization of resources and emphasize the development of agriculture, fisheries, livestock, forestry, agro-food processing, and tourism amongst the three countries. Additionally, the countries compete with one another in the production and export of palm oil and rubber products and in the tourism industry, as well as in the export of lower skilled manufactured goods and in auto parts.
