Reuters-FOCUS-Asia looks for early

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Subject: Reuters-FOCUS-Asia looks for early economic recovery 

FOCUS-Asia looks for early economic recovery
07:16 a.m. Mar 18, 1999 Eastern
By Chris Johnson

HANOI, March 18 (Reuters) - Asian nations expressed hope of an early
economic recovery on Thursday and urged Japan to play a greater role in
reviving the region.

On the eve of a two-day meeting of Southeast Asian finance ministers and
senior figures from Japan, South Korea and China, officials said the
regional crisis had bottomed out.

The International Monetary Fund's Asia Pacific director, Hubert Neiss, who
will also attend the Hanoi meeting, agreed.

Asked when Asia would recover from the severe financial meltdown that has
swept the region since mid-1997, Neiss said:

``It depends from country to country. In some countries you can already see
that it has started. In other countries it may come later this year. In
South Korea it seems already to have started, Thailand will also come and I
guess the Philippines.

``Indonesia may be a bit later this year,'' he said.

He said ``normal growth'' rates were probably two years away. ``I still
think two years. But nobody knows precisely,'' he said.

Finance ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
will meet in the Vietnamese capital on Friday and Saturday and are expected
to discuss a new surveillance mechanism designed to give early warning
signals of future financial woes.

Economists say better information and financial transparency will lure
foreign capital back to Asia and minimise the risk of a repeat of the
region's catastrophic meltdown.

Miranda Goeltom, managing director of the Indonesian central bank, told
Reuters it was essential to provide more information on ASEAN economies to
prevent such a crisis recurring.

``The focus here will be how to prevent crises in the future and to resolve
the current situation,'' she said.

Economists say evidence of more transparency could attract new investors to
Southeast Asia and help it recover.

``Foreign capital is looking for a place to go outside the United States and
Europe and will settle where it feels comfortable. It will be repelled if it
thinks bad news is being swept under the carpet,'' said David Fernandez,
ASEAN economist at JP Morgan in Singapore.


Officials from ASEAN -- grouping Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- pressed Japan on
Thursday to speed up disbursement of funds from its $30 billion Miyazawa
Plan aid package.

Goeltom said ASEAN hoped Japan would accelerate distribution of funds from
its Miyazawa Plan, because many countries in the region were suffering badly
from the crisis.

She said Japan was also considering broadening its aid to Asia by lending to
countries not targeted by the Miyazawa Plan.

Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Eisuke Sakakibara
told a news conference Japan was willing to provide additional assistance to
Asian countries on top of the money it had earmarked for the Miyazawa Plan.

Philippines Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu said the finance ministers'
meeting would also look at ways of building a social safety net to help the
region's poor cope with poverty.

``We will be discussing providing a system to protect the most vulnerable
sector of society,'' he said.