標題:East Asia moves to counter slowdown By Tim Johnston in Phuket, Thailand Published: February 22 2009 23:30 | Last updated: February 22 2009 23:30 East Asia started flexing its collective financial muscle in the battle against the global slowdown over the weekend, with the head of the Asian Development Bank saying he was confident his shareholders would triple the ADB ’s capital, and regional finance ministers committing $40bn more to a strengthened regional liquidity fund. The moves show that East Asian economies, which between them control $3,500bn in foreign reserves but have been badly hit by the slowdown in exports, are willing to commit substantial funds to multilateral action to counter the financial crisis. Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the ADB, said he was confident he had secured agreement to triple the organisation’s general capital to $115bn. Mr Kuroda said most of the expansion in the capital would come in the form of “quorum capital”, which is guaranteed by shareholder countries but not committed in cash. Only $5bn would have to be paid into the bank during the next five years. “We have not made any capital increases for close to 15 years,” Mr Kuroda told the Financial Times on the fringes of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations finance ministers’ meeting in the Thai resort of Phuket. Mr Kuroda said that the increase in general capital would allow the ADB to expand its annual lending from $9bn to $13bn, adding that some of the money would be put towards credit guarantees for Asian countries that are facing spiralling risk premiums on their borrowing. He said that he hoped to have final agreement by the next Asean finance ministers meeting in Bali in May. The special weekend meeting of ministers from the 10 Asean nations, along with China, Japan and Korea, agreed to strengthen the Chiang Mai Initiative, bilateral swap agreements designed to provide a backstop should any of the member currencies come under attack, as they did in the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The meeting agreed to increase the available funds from $80bn to $120bn and to change the initiative from a loose bilateral currency swap agreements to a multilateral agreement. The agreement has limited practical relevance in the current crisis. Asian currencies are not under the same sort of pressure today: the two countries that did see rapid devaluations in 1997, South Korea and Singapore, solved their problems with deals with the US. A continuing stipulation that countries have to agree a programme with the International Monetary Fund to access the bulk of the available Chiang Mai funds will make it an unattractive option. To make such an agreement would be political suicide for many governments in a region that harbours bitter memories of the strictures imposed by the IMF after the last financial crisis. The ministers said they were trying to build a surveillance mechanism to take the place of the IMF, but it will be some time before it is fully up and running. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6a8cf682-0113-11de-8f6e-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 新聞來源: (需有正確連結) -- --

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