OVERVIEW

 
This conference aims to survey the major macroeconomic issues facing ASEAN countries, with a view to informing the ongoing policy debate and adding to the empirical evidence available on key subjects.

The opening session, led by Indonesia's Finance Minister Mar'ie Muhammad and IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus, will review the economic record of many ASEAN countries, a record that combines rapid growth, macroeconomic stability, and a sustained reduction in poverty. The session will examine the contributory factors to these successes, and the policy agenda for sustaining them well into the 21st century; it will also draw lessons for other economies, including those presently at an earlier stage in their economic transformation in the ASEAN region. This session is expected to identify key themes for discussion during the remainder of the conference.

Following the opening session, three additional sessions will cover, respectively: saving, investment, and the current account; monetary policy, financial liberalization, and capital market development; and the medium-term outlook. The Chairman of each session is also expected to invite questions from the audience.

A number of background papers have been prepared for the conference, and lead speakers and panelists are invited to draw on them, as necessary, during their presentations. These papers will also be available at the conference. Summaries of the papers are contained in this brochure.1

For the session on saving, investment, and the current account, papers on external current account and fiscal sustainability, and on the determinants of private saving have been prepared. In contrast to other regions, current account deficits in ASEAN countries are primarily due to high levels of investment; the papers explore the implications for sustainability, an issue that is likely to be central to the discussion at this session. They also highlight the importance of fiscal policy in determining national saving rates and, more generally, in maintaining or strengthening sustainability in many countries in the region.

The papers that have been prepared for the session on monetary policy, financial liberalization, and capital market development cover a wide spectrum of institutional and policy issues. They are focused around the systemic changes taking place in the domestic and external financial environment of the ASEAN countries and their implications for the conduct of monetary and exchange rate policy. These changes have been driven by a number of closely intertwined factors, including financial deepening, liberalization, and globalization, and will have major effects on financial structure, money demand, the conduct of monetary policy, and overall macroeconomic management in ASEAN countries (including the policy responses to capital inflows in the region).

The discussion for the final session of the conference, on the medium-term outlook, will be led by a round table of speakers. The background papers for this session deal with ASEAN in a regional perspective, and future growth and productivity trends. Regional aspects of ASEAN performance include the role of trade and foreign investment in fostering the region's remarkable record of economic growth, and the prospects for sustaining rates of growth of trade within ASEAN above the world average. These prospects will be helped by a number of factors, including continuing rapid productivity growth as well as the full integration of the transition economies of Southeast Asia with the rest of the world.


1The papers have been prepared or coordinated by the Southeast Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF, and should be considered work in progress. They will be finalized in light of the deliberations at the conference, and other comments received. The views expressed in the papers are the views of the authors, and are not necessarily the views of the IMF or of Bank Indonesia.

 

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