The main objective of India’s ‘Look East’ policy toward Southeast Asia is economic integration with the region. India's success in this sphere is quite significant, as the interactions that began in the early 1990s with a sectoral dialogue partnership with ASEAN and graduated to India’s becoming part of the EAS, have resulted in considerably greater integration with the rest of Asia than is commonly realized or acknowledged.

Even though India’s trade and investment in the region is quite insignificant compared to its share in global trade and also in comparison with China, their quantum leap and growth in the last decade has been quite spectacular if one looks at where it started. The India-ASEAN FTA is another step forward toward further widening and deepening that integration