ASIAN NATIONS SHOULD ASSERT THEMSELVES IN GLOBAL FINANCE,SAYS MAS CHAIRMAN

MELBOURNE, July 7 (Bernama) -- Malaysia Airlines Chairman Dr Munir Majid has
called on rising Asian countries to assert themselves in global finance to
ensure future economic growth.

He made the call in his keynote address, "Asia - Where Will It Be In The
21st Century", at the 18th biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association
of Australia at the University of Adelaide in South Australia Wednesday.

Munir said Asian decision-makers should stop dancing to the tune of failed
regulators and so-called financial experts, who keep telling them how to manage
their markets when what they should be concentrating on is, seeing the growth of
those markets.

A Senior Visiting Fellow of LSE IDEAS (Centre for International Affairs,
Diplomacy and Strategy) in London, he said despite the many global economic
problems, Asian economies continued to do well, registering a 5.2 per cent
growth last year and are expected to grow 7.5 per cent in 2010 and 7.3 per cent
in 2011, with China and India well ahead of these growth levels.

"Both China and India are on track to becoming the two largest economies in
the world, pushing the United States to third place," he added.

Touching on civil aviation, Munir said travel within the Asia Pacific
region had already exceeded that of any other region globally, "demonstrating a
strong level of growth and integration even as we are talking about the future
of Asia".

However, he said: "The great infrastructure boom that will carry Asia
forward in the next decade, requires a massive US$8.3 trillion, about US$700
billion annually.

"The capital formation for this amount cannot depend on the current system
of global financing alone."

He said there were too many dependencies in the current global financial
system, with a long supply line from savers to over-spending major financial
centres that would then bring back, in an equally long supply line, those
savings to Asian shores as "foreign" investment, attaching sovereign debt grades
to Asian countries to boot.

"Asian countries must mobilise their savings better and cut these supply
lines.

"They should strengthen, enlarge their banks and financial institutions
while developing the financial markets. They should make an Asian bond
market a reality fast," he added.

Munir said Asian countries should understand that it was the
geo-political element in global financial standards and flows that led to the
continued Western desire to want to control them.

"With Western control over regulatory thought and investment
decision-making, Asian countries are not fully free to realise the promise of
the Asian century," he explained.

"What is emphasised to us in Asia, even after the financial and economic
disasters of 2008-09, is the importance of the power of the market, as if it is
some super non-human mechanism," he said.

"On the contrary, the continued exercise of the power of the market means
a continued exercise of power in the market by those who control that power,
namely countries, institutions and individuals," Munir said.
-- BERNAMA