|
Previous
Part - VIII
One way to further strengthen regional information exchange, economic monitoring, and policy discussion would be to establish independent technical as well as decision-making bodies at the regional level in the next few years. The technical body would monitor regional economies and provide independent analysis on economic and development issues to the decision-making body.
Conclusion
Europe's experience shows that creating a regional currency is a massive and slow job. However, Asia has the advantage of learning from Europe and shortening the process of monetary integration. Asia's economic dynamism will further help accelerate the process.
Progress over the past few years in each of the areas illustrated in this paper has been real and impressive. The work outlined above represents the first steps toward greater monetary integration in the region and will help develop the access to information, trust, confidence and cooperation that are the crucial building blocks to a potential single currency. It is now time to move quickly to strengthen each of these blocks and expedite the day Asia will enjoy the advantages of a unified currency. Achieving currency union would require greatly improved policy coordination, stronger regional institutions, and political consensus across countries. It will also be important to ensure that region-level efforts at monetary and financial integration complement, and do not compete with, global and national initiatives.The key question is how to sequence the next steps to support the market-driven process of integration and how fast to move.
Concluded.
Appendix
* Contributed by -
Vipul Mittal,
First Year, MBA (Global),
IMT, Nagpur.
|
