Participating countries from the ASEAN region attended the 4^th Special Workshop on ASEAN- Japan Chemicals Safety Database (AJCSD) organized by the AMEICC Working Group on Chemical Industry (WG-CI) in Bangkok, Thailand. According to Mr. Hiroyuki Hanawa, Chairman on the AJCSD Project, the said workshop was said to be the last before the trial operation.

The ASEAN-Japan Chemical Safety Database is part of the ASEAN- Japan 10-year Strategic Economic Cooperation Roadmap. The purposes of the AJCSD are to enhance transparency and reduce compliance risk through sharing local regulatory information.

The participating countries, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand, had a brief presentation on the current and future contribution for the AJCSD. The Philippines was represented by Ms. Lolit Reyes, Supervising Investment Specialist of the Board of Investments (BOI) and Gretchen Fontejon- Enarle, SPIK Director. The draft copy of the Disclaimer and draft structure of the Terms of Reference (TOR), presented by Mr. Junya Inose of MRI Consultancy, to be used during the trial operation of the database were finalized after several discussions and comments.

The Philippines participated in the initial phase of data uploading through the provision of list of chemicals included in the Priority Chemical List (PCL) and Chemical Control Order (CCO) which was provided by the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB). During the trial operation which starts from April 2015 until March 2016, Users can access the database through www.ajcsd.org and can provide their comments and feedbacks through their national focal person.