UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews
Network
/ 02
November 2009 - Bangkok
- ESCAP's Dr. Noeleen Heyzer launched the Asia-Pacific Trade and
Investment Conference here today by urging a rebalancing regional cooperation
and strengthening regional
connectivity to further drive economic growth already too reliant on
trade with western countries, she told 150 prominent trade economists from
UNTAD, WTO, OECD, ARTNeT, the Lee Kuan
Yew School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, the National University
of Singapore and around the world.
In
her remarks, Dr. Heyzer called for streamlining trade procedures, saying that
average gains from improved trade facilitation would far exceed those
that might be achieved through further removal of tariff barriers.
She
also said untangling
the noodle
bowl consolidating
the151 existing bilateral
and regional trade agreements would
encourage increased levels of economic
integration, and that trade
should contribute to development that would include the poor and be
environmentally sustainable.
The
Economists Conference
on Trade-led
Growth in
Times of Crisis commemorates
the fifth
anniversary of
the Asia-Pacific
Research and Training
Network on Trade (ARTNeT), and
features discussions by prominent trade economists.
Panellists
today noted that although the three countries that have weathered the
financial crisis with the least damage in Asia were China, India and Indonesia
the global crisis nevertheless required the regions leaders to
fundamentally rethink their trade policies.
The
global imbalances between savings and investments between the world's
countries will need to be addressed in
order to find real solutions, said Alan Deardorff, Professor of Economics at
the University of Michigan.
Debapriya
Bhattacharya, Special Advisor on Least Developed Countries at the UN
Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD), stressed the need for a global
system of
exchange rate
management, as
current speculation on exchanges rates were sustaining the economic
imbalances.
Meanwhile,
Asians could
no longer
be free-riders on the
multilateral trading system, said Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
Asian
intellectuals need to provide intellectual leadership.
Also speaking
today was
Patrick Low, Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
For
further information,
please see
the website.
Contact:
Mr. Marc Proksch, ESCAP Trade and Investment Division, proksch.unescap@un.org;
and Ms. Thawadi Pachariyangkun, UN/ESCAP Information Services, pachariyangkun.unescap@un.org
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