A two-day international conference on Global Economic Recovery and Asian Perspective ended here yesterday with a series of recommendations and call for measures accordingly by the Asian countries.
The recommendations were made in the areas of trade, investment, regional cooperation, finance, governance, environment and political dimensions as precautionary measures to avoid possible financial recession like that of 2008 the world witnessed and suffered.
The International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh (ICC,B) president Mahbubur Rahman described the outcome made in the two-day international conference on Global Economic Recovery and Asian Perspective at a press conference in a city hotel.
“Political cooperation, regional integration and robust fiscal measures are the keys to taking the Asian countries forward,” he said.
Asian recovery will be driven by continental growth, but its sustainability will depend on recovery in the rest of the world, he said.
He said consumption expansion in China and India and relationship between these two countries will be critical in shaping the Asian agenda in the future.
Under trade segment, the recommendations include promoting inter-regional Asian exports, formulation of South Asian customs union to facilitate trade integration by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers in South Asia, development of value chains for enhancing competitive capacities and coherence in global system.
In the area of investment, the recommendations include attracting more investment from the region, massive investment in research and development, wooing quality investment in bridging finance deficit from which Asia suffers and SME (small and medium enterprise) promotion.
In regional cooperation, the recommendations include Asian regional cooperation for recovering from the ongoing global growth slowdown and tackling possible future recurrence of global financial crisis, better connectivity to promote productivity in the region, providing opportunities for other countries by emerging economies for enhancing exports, domestic consumption of developing and emerging economies for Asian recovery, infrastructure, connectivity and energy cooperation.
In financial sectors that are now under stress in some Asian countries, the recommendations focus on forming regional bond markets to harness savings into real sector investment, holding Asian regional dialogues to broaden the windows of concessional lending to lower income economies to help protect their debt sustainability, presenting a new unified financial architecture at the global forums for ensuring financial stability, working together among Asian countries in carrying forward their significant attainments in promoting inclusive financing towards equitable socioeconomic progress and cushion providing resilience-lending to the growth acceleration framework.
Under the governance segment, the recommendations include less government and more governance, enabling environment created by the government to flourish business, institutional and bureaucratic reforms, inclusive political culture to reduce democratic deficiency and woman’s employment.
On environment, the recommendations include tackling climate change, committing to a new transformative growth paradigm and on political dimension, the recommendations are recognising the shifts towards China and India in the 20th century, good governance and inclusive politics and Chain-India relationship
Developing Asia’s growth was largely driven by the growth of two economies, China and India, which were also an important driving force of the world economy.