Monday, June 21, 2004
Malaysia tells East Asia to hasten economic integration
Reuters Kuala Lumpur, June 21
South East and East Asian countries should hasten economic integration to meet the challenges of an expanded Europe and free trade area of the Americas, Malaysia's prime minister said on Monday.
"I believe that we in the region have dallied long enough," Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also Malaysia's finance minister, told an economic conference.
"It is high time to launch, in all earnestness, our historic East Asian economic project - the building of the East Asia Economic Community."
However, he said it would take many years to create a grouping on a par with the European Union.
It could take "at least two generations for East Asia to reach the European benchmark," he said.
An East Asian economic grouping was first proposed by former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad more than 10 years ago to group the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, Japan and South Korea.
Southeast Asia and East Asia were jolted into improving economic cooperation after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, but progress has been slow.
ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea set up a system of bilateral hard-currency swaps among their central banks to counter the effect of any speculative attack on their currencies. Swaps totalling $36.5 billion have been signed under the Chiang Mai initiative.
He also called on the region to create an Asian monetary fund to improve financial cooperation, saying this would supplement but not supplant the International Monetary Fund.
Earlier this month, the prime minister told a seminar in Tokyo that it was not too early to think about a single Asian currency.
Abdullah, who employs a more diplomatic approach in relations with the West than his combative predecessor Mahathir, also pledged good relations with countries outside East Asia.
"We must ensure the strongest productive relations with key countries outside East Asia such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia," he said.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.