The Asean way handed the bloc's rotating chairmanship to Burma in 2014 despite continued international concerns over the nation's widely condemned human rights record.

All the same, Asean's plan for a single, unified economic community by 2015 seems increasingly unlikely given the disparate development among member states and the lack of legal structures and cross-border administrative infrastructures. But Burma’s emergence from the suffocating stranglehold of military dictatorship will certainly help speed the process up, says Tay.

“Much, however, depends on whether sanctions put in place by the West for more than two decades are lifted,” he added.