Asean set to discuss response to global crisis

BANGKOK: Southeast Asian nations and key regional partners will use a summit next week to discuss their follow-up to a G20 plan to lift the world out of recession, Thailand’s premier said Sunday.

The summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) and dialogue partners China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand takes place in the Thai resort of Pattaya from April 10 to 12.

It comes just over a week after the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies agreed at a key meeting in London to commit one trillion dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other global bodies.

“We will discuss what we can achieve from the G20 Summit,” said Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who attended the London conference as an observer because his country holds the rotating chairmanship of Asean.

The Pattaya summit will be followed by a so-called Global Dialogue in the Thai capital, Bangkok, Sunday featuring United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the chiefs of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

The G20 summit pledged a huge raft of new spending and a crackdown on tax havens and excess corporate pay to battle the economic slowdown sweeping the globe.

Asia is feeling the pinch from the crisis, with the Asian Development Bank forecasting recently that growth in the region’s developing nations will almost halve this year.
— AFP