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.