ASEAN delays its surveillance system: Official

ASEAN delays its surveillance system: Official

MANILA (Dow Jones): The start of a pioneering scheme for
Southeast Asian countries to mutually monitor each other's
economies has been delayed, but the early-warning system to avert
future crises in the region isn't being abandoned, a senior
official from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or
ASEAN, said yesterday.

Nine months after ASEAN finance ministers endorsed a mutual-
surveillance mechanism to exchange and review economic data
within the nine-member bloc, the so-called Manila Framework is
still just a blueprint.

There is little prospect of getting the scheme off the ground
until ASEAN governments can agree on the sensitive issue of what
type of data will be scrutinized.

In an interview with Dow Jones, ASEAN Secretary General
Rudolfo Severino acknowledged that implementing the surveillance
system was taking longer than expected.

Asked if a surveillance mechanism was slowly becoming a dead
letter, Severino strongly affirmed that it wasn't.

But he said it was important for the group's finance ministers
to quickly resolve the issue.

At a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers over the weekend, the
Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon disclosed that some
ASEAN members found the data being requested as too "intrusive"
and "private."

Siazon didn't name the ASEAN members balking at the prospect
of airing this type of data among the group.

ASEAN comprises the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei,
Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Severino said it was important to send a strong signal of
ASEAN's determination to get to grips with the crisis.

Furthermore, swapping economic and financial data within ASEAN
was a meaningful step toward greater transparency.

The Manila-based Asian Development Bank will oversee the
operations of the surveillance mechanism for two years before it
moves to ASEAN's secretariat.

The exact role of the Asian Development Bank's involvement
also still has to be worked out.

"We're pushing (for the surveillance mechanism). It's not dead
-- its alive but delayed," Severino said.

Severino stressed that while it was important to quickly
implement the surveillance mechanism, it wasn't a quick-fix to
the region's year-old financial crisis.

"The fate of the region doesn't hinge on this," he said. "I
think it's a valuable tool and we are still committed to working
out its specifics," he said.

ASEAN foreign ministers closed their 31st annual meeting
Saturday. Their joint communique gave political backing to the
measures adopted by ASEAN's finance ministers to deal with the
region's financial crisis, but no new solutions were offered.