East Asia and Latin America are both composed of developing countries and are economically dynamic and complementary to each other. They follow the global trend of regional cooperation; the need for intercontinental cooperation between East Asia and Latin America arose because there was no official cooperative mechanism bridging the two regions. In 1998, a concrete proposal to enhance the relations of the two regions was initiated by the former Singaporean Prime Minister
Goh Chok Tong. Subsequently, the East Asia-Latin America Forum Senior Officials meeting was held in
Singapore in 1998, marking the beginning of the organization. == Member states ==