Finance ministers from 13 Asian nations agreed to pool part of their US$2.7 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves to prevent a repeat of the crisis that depleted the region's holdings 10 years ago.
"We unanimously agreed in principle that a self-managed reserve pooling arrangement" is appropriate, Japan's Koji Omi, China's Jin Renqing (金人慶) and South Korea's Kwon Okyu and ministers from Southeast Asia said in a statement in Kyoto yesterday. Countries in the region face the challenge of "greater financial market volatilities."
Asian governments want to avoid having to rely on institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which forced them to adopt harsh economic policies in return for bailouts during the 1997-'98 financial crisis. The ministers haven't decided how the plan will work, how much money will be involved, or set a date for when it will start, saying it needs more study.
This is "just the latest of a number of regional initiatives which have promised great things but then fizzled out," said Mark Williams, an economist at London-based Capital Economics. It's hard to argue the move is "anything more than a symbolic step."
A year ago, ministers from the same countries said in Hyderabad, India, that they would study the creation of an index of the region's currencies as a precursor to forming a single currency sometime in the future. The ministers meet each year on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank annual gathering.
"A relatively modest proposal for a currency index comprising a weighted basket of regional currencies has been bogged down in wrangling," Williams said. Officials from the ADB now agree the proposal of a single currency is "many decades from being viable," he added.
The finance ministers yesterday agreed to expand on an arrangement established in 2000 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, whereby pairs of nations would lend each other money at favorable terms if help is needed to support their exchange rates.
The total amount of country-to-country currency swaps available will be increased to US$80 billion from US$75 billion, the ministers said Saturday.
The ministers didn't make much headway on plans to develop an Asian bond market, saying only that they had agreed on setting "clear deliverables to move forward," the statement read.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day