Southeast Asian governments should prepare to wind down economic stimulus measures brought in during the global financial crisis, according to a draft summit statement seen by AFP yesterday.
In the document, ASEAN leaders said they were confident the support measures could be phased out without damaging economic recovery.
“We affirm the need to start working on mechanisms to reverse the fiscal and monetary stimulus and then phase out these policy accommodations,” said the statement, due to be issued tomorrow after a two-day ASEAN summit in Hanoi.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The draft gave no timescale but said the leaders were “fully confident that at the appropriate time we will be able to do so effectively to ensure sustained recovery and development.”
“We will maintain monetary and fiscal support while preparing for an orderly unwinding of expansionary policies until the recovery is on a firm footing,” the draft said.
In the draft statement, the ASEAN leaders also pledged to continue cooperation to restore the “health of financial systems” and to boost monitoring procedures to spot any future problems at an early stage.
Regionally, Australia and India have raised interest rates to check inflation, and ASEAN member Malaysia last month hiked its key rate for the first time in almost four years after the economy emerged from recession.
Other central banks in the 10-nation ASEAN bloc, including the group’s biggest member Indonesia, have kept interest rates steady.
The ASEAN leaders, in the draft, also pledged to push forward with efforts to deepen regional economic integration with a goal to establish a single market and manufacturing base by 2015.
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