Fighting poverty, stabilizing Asia's currencies, nurturing its financial markets and assessing China's rising economic clout are some issues expected to top the agenda at the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) ministers' meeting this weekend.
Beginning today, finance officials from more than 60 countries are spending three days at the bank's annual meeting of governors on South Korea's Jeju resort island.
The topics are as broad as Asia is diverse.
Though the region Japan and export powerhouse China, about 720 million Asians -- nearly two-thirds of the world's poor -- still live hand-to-mouth on less than US$1 a day.
That means cutting poverty and hunger are as important as nurturing financial markets and keeping currency speculators at bay for countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and Pacific island nations like Kiribati.
The bank said Monday that halving poverty by 2015 -- a goal at the 2002 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa -- would rank atop the agenda.
With the bank forecasting 6.8 percent growth in developing Asian nations this year, ministers are expected to grapple with the tricky task of engineering an expansion without making poverty worse.
Ways to avoid the pitfalls of a possible slowdown in China, terrorism and disease outbreaks -- such as SARS and bird flu -- are also expected to come up.
Ahead of the meeting, officials focused on how to stabilize financial markets and currencies.
Yesterday, South Korea's Finance and Economy Minister Lee Hun-jai said officials were near agreement on a plan to boost foreign currency reserves, currency policy coordination and market monitoring. Such steps have been concerns since massive capital flight from Asia triggered a financial crisis in the late 1990s.
"The vice ministers of South Korea, China and Japan are ... putting the final touches on an agreement," Lee said.
ADB President Tadao Chino said ministers were debating ways to integrate bond markets. This would add to regional programs aimed at sorting out Asia's problems without relying on the World Bank and other international lenders.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
At least US$50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: That is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to militants linked to al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law. Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad.” Its goal: Oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralyzing the west African country’s economy.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
RSS