In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in late March that the nation was on target to move from the status of a low-income to a lower-middle-income nation by the end of 2013, ranking it the 15th country that obtained high economic growth in the world in the last 10 years.

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Global economic recovery in 2012 remains tenuous, with the World Bank recently downgrading its forecast for this year’s global growth from 3.6 percent to 2.5 percent. This slide in expectations and persistently high unemployment rates in many countries has sparked a resurgence of protectionist tendencies toward trade. These tendencies are couched in the language of “bringing jobs back,” while tariffs are euphemistically coined as “flexibility” needed to protect domestic producers. South Asia has suffered for decades from a low level of intraregional cooperation, both politically and economically.

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From January 25-29, the world’s most powerful leaders from the public and private sectors gather in the Swiss town of Davos to try to agree on measures that will eventually impact billions of people across the world. The event is being held against an unprecedentedly gloomy global economic picture. The World Bank
recently reported that the world economy will grow by only 2.5 percent in 2012, far below initial estimates of 3.6 percent. In Europe, leaders have yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to the eurozone crisis.

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Cannes, a medieval city on the French Riviera internationally renowned for its luxurious hotels, seafront “promenade,” and International Film Festival, is used to welcoming the rich and famous. It is, however, another type of festival that will take place in Cannes this week. The city is gearing up for the sixth annual Group of Twenty (G-20) Summit where heads of state, finance ministers, and Central Bank governors from 20 industrialized and developing economies (19 countries plus the European Union) will converge to discuss financial markets and the world economy. The G-20, whose member countries account for over 80 percent of the global output and two-thirds of the world’s population, is the premier forum for industrialized and developing countries to discuss key issues in the global economy and monitor international economic cooperation.

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Watching the debt-ceiling debate unfold in Washington, D.C., in recent weeks reminded me of another financial crisis, the one in Thailand, which started the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. That crisis had a devastating impact on the Thai people. Economic growth fell from 6.5 percent to negative 10 percent, inflation rose…

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