JAKARTA, Indonesia?The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has indicated that a regional crisis fund may be expanded from $80 billion to $120 billion as the region braces itself for the full impact of the global economic crisis.
Asean Secretary General Dr. Surin Pitsuwan told a group of Asian and American journalists at the Asean Secretariat office here that the expansion of the common fund would be a ?confidence building measure? for the region.
Finance ministers from 13 Asian countries will discuss expanding the fund?s currency swap scheme to $120 billion at a meeting in Thailand next weekend, Thai Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij had said on Friday.
The fund was agreed upon by the 10-member Asean and its three dialogue partners?China, Japan and Korea?last year.
The meeting is to be held on the resort island of Phuket on Feb. 22.
Asean groups the Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Korn said the Phuket meeting would also exchange views on other measures to tackle the economic crisis as well as the enhancement of regional cooperation on trade and financial markets.
The expanded scheme would then be presented to regional leaders for approval at a summit from Feb. 27 to March 1 in Hua Hin, southwest of Bangkok, and could be implemented by the end of the year.
Among the issues still to be discussed are the surveillance mechanisms and the processes to be followed before the money can be dispensed.
Traumatized by the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the countries of the region were now following a ?positive hurt instinct? by striving to work together to cope with the current financial meltdown, Surin said.
He said the economic downturn has also provided an avenue for Asean to promote global competitiveness through regional integration, aiming to become a single market by 2015.
Surin said a ?post-crisis world system? should give birth to ?multipolar growth centers? so as to take the pressure off Western Europe and the United States, the world?s current growth poles. With a report from Inquirer wires
