"Flexibilities are now accepted but the use of flexibility option cannot be exercise indiscriminately," Ong said. This means, he said, that a member country cannot just pop it up at the last minute.

"We are prepared to give you the flexibility but this kind of request must be done early," he said as he warned that the more members ask for flexibility the more the slower the economic integration of the region becomes.

Economic Ministers have already agreed to accelerate the economic integration of the region to 2015 from 2020. Other countries with difficulty meeting the deadline are given the flexibility but the idea was that everybody would be in by 2015.

The 11 PIS, which the 10-member country ASEAN believes to have their competitive advantages, are agro-based products, air travel, automotive products, information and communications technology, electronics, fisheries, healthcare, rubber-based products, textiles and apparel, tourism and wood-based products.

The Philippines is the country coordinator for the electronics sector.

The original six ASEAN countries are expected to accelerate the economic integration of the 11 sectors by 2010 and the four new members (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) are expected to fully integrate by 2015.

In the case of the Philippines, it asked for flexibilities on certain agricultural products like pineapple and rice.

According to Ong, the economic ministers during their Friday night meeting went through the integration roadmaps of the 11 priority integration sectors (PIS).

"The integration roadmaps have been finalized sometime last year but the ministers felt they have to refresh it because it was done in a jiffy because of the limited time," he said.