ASEAN Common Time

Proposed time zone for southeast Asia Map showing the member states of ASEAN. The ASEAN Common Time (ACT) is a proposed standard time for all Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states. It was proposed in 1995 by Singapore, and in 2004 and 2015 by Malaysia to make business across countries easier. The proposal failed because of opposition in Thailand and Cambodia, who felt that replacing their countries' current time zones (UTC+07:00) in favour of UTC+08:00 was unfavourable. Currently, there are four different time zones used by ASEAN countries. UTC+06:30 (Myanmar); UTC+07:00 (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Western Indonesia); UTC+08:00 (Brunei, Central Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore); and UTC+09:00 (Eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste). The proposal would institute UTC+08:00 as the ASEAN Central Time, putting Myanmar at UTC+07:00, and leaving the less populous eastern Indonesia at UTC+09:00.[citation needed] This would result in the vast majority of the region's people and territory lining up at UTC+08:00—in sync with China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Western Australia, while the eastern islands of Indonesia would remain at UTC+09:00—in sync