Inclusive, Balanced, Sustained Growth in the Asia-Pacific

Preface

vii Preface As the global economic crisis intensified in March 2009, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) organized a workshop on “Regional Responses to the Economic Crisis” hosted by the Japan Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation in Osaka, Japan. The meeting concluded that the Asia-Pacific faced historic challenges that call for unprecedented policy responses, cooperation and analysis. To address these challenges, the PECC created a Taskforce on the Global Economic Crisis to “assess the region’s progress in fighting recession, rebalancing economic structures, and managing sustained recoveries … [and to] anticipate the critical policy changes that will be required in the Asia Pacific to move from crisis management to stable growth.” Recognizing that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and other institutions were already contributing timely information on global developments, the PECC Standing Committee concluded that value could be added by providing independent analysis of policy options with particular emphasis on regional responses in the Asia-Pacific, where several key economies involved in the crisis are located. I was asked to chair the Taskforce. Over the next few weeks we assembled a team of seven experts — an international group of leading researchers — and developed an ambitious work programme to produce results in less than six months, given the urgency of the crisis. We invited several other distinguished experts to serve as a “Panel of Advisers” (listed below). We discussed preliminary findings at a conference on “The Global Economic Crisis: Macroeconomic Issues”, hosted by the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo on 28–29 July 2009 and an advanced draft at a conference on the “Economic Crisis and Recovery: Enhancing Resilience, Structural Reform, and Freer Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region”, hosted by the Singapore National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore on 9–10 October 2009. viii Comments at both conferences provided essential guidance for the study and helped to improve this report. A preliminary summary of the report appeared as Chapter 1 of PECC’s State of the Region Report 2009–2010 and was presented to participants at the APEC Leaders’ Meeting in November 2009. We are hopeful that work within APEC will find these recommendations useful and build on them. The team is grateful to Drs Charles Morrison and Jusuf Wanandi, PECC Co-Chairs, and the PECC Standing Committee for encouragement and support. The Taskforce’s Advisers provided highly valuable input on research plans and intermediate drafts. We hesitate to single out individuals, but Jonathan Fried, Ambassador of Canada to Japan, and his colleagues provided especially detailed and insightful comments at several stages. We are grateful to the Asian Development Bank Institute and its Dean Masahiro Kawai, Mario Lamberte, Research Director, and Peter Morgan, for hosting our planning efforts. Eduardo Pedrosa, the Secretary General of PECC and Jessica Yom of the Secretariat provided outstanding support for the project, promoted it actively and successfully, and brought this publication to fruition. Peter A. Petri Chair, PECC Taskforce on the Global Economic Crisis viii Preface ...