Stronger Cooperation Urged Between Private, Public Sectors in AsiaA senior government official Tuesday urged stronger financial cooperation between the private and public sectors in the Asia Pacific region amid the global economic slowdown.Acting Financial Secretary Stephen Ip made the remarks at a conference Tuesday on "A Public-Private Dialogue for Decision- Makers on Financial Co-operation and Regionalism in East Asia". Ip said he was confident that Asia will continue to grow in the future. "With greater regional co-operation, we can help ensure that this growth will be healthy, balanced, and, above all, sustained," he said. The conference is part of a series promoted by the World Bank and the Pacific Economic Co-operation Council, together with various regional partners, to encourage frank and informal discussions between the public and private sectors on issues of mutual interest. In a region in which private initiative has been a driving force behind economic growth, it is only right that the private sector should play an important role in promoting the conference themes - financial co-operation, liberalization and competition - topics on which it has much to say, Ip noted. The real challenge is to work collectively and co-operatively for the good of the whole region, through assisting each other, exchanging information, pooling experience and resources, removing barriers and opening channels of communication, he said. Now, in the light of the experience of the Asian financial crisis, discussions are under way on co-operation in economic and market surveillance, regional financial integration, monitoring of capital flows and the production of early warning signals, the official said. Some areas will require more long-term treatment, and a good deal of patience, such as the establishment of an Asian Monetary Fund and the creation of an Asian Currency Unit, which are only at the intellectual discussion stage. Still more remote is the possibility of an Asian Monetary Union, he said. Meanwhile, there are more immediate and more practical tasks to be getting on with. One of these is corporate restructuring, especially in the banking sector, and improvements in corporate governance to help our economies avoid the excesses, and deal more effectively with the shocks that characterized the last financial crisis, Ip added. A further task is the development of an Asian capital market. This is particularly important as a deep, liquid, efficient and integrated regional market would be one of the strongest safeguards against the sort of financial crisis recently experienced in Asia, the official stressed. Ip said Hong Kong takes a special interest in this development, as leader, through the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, of an APEC Collaborative Initiative on the Development of Domestic Bond Markets. One of the outcomes of this project so far has been the production of a compendium of sound practices to facilitate the development of domestic bond markets in the region. Another key aspect of financial co-operation is the development and application of information technology to our regional infrastructure - something in which we all have a role to play, he added. "Hong Kong, I believe, has already made a useful contribution with the launch, last December, of the world's first Payment versus Payment foreign exchange transaction system", Ip said. |
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