Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki yesterday said Asian countries should be more flexible with their foreign exchange rates to better deal with economic shocks.
The remarks come as China is under strong pressure to introduce more flexibility to its system of fixing the yuan to the US dollar.
"I believe that further flexibility is desirable," he said when asked about currency flexibility in Asian developing nations.
He spoke on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.
Tanigaki said he believed more flexibility in China's foreign exchange regime was also desirable.
"China's economy has grown extremely large, to the point that its every move affects Asian and global economies," he said. "It is only natural that there is a lot of attention on China's currency system, given its large impact" on global economies.
He addedthat it was up to China to decide on any changes to the yuan's effective peg to the dollar.
On Wednesday, finance ministers pledged to boost by up to 100 percent the size of currency swap agreements designed to cushion economies from the instability that helped trigger the Asian Crisis.
RSS