Crisis-hit Asia has surplus

Crisis-hit Asia has surplus

LONDON (Dow Jones): The five countries worst affected by the
Asian financial crisis had a combined trade surplus of US$85
billion in 1998 compared with a combined trade deficit of $15
billion the previous year, a World Trade Organization official
said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a conference on Asia organized by the Royal
Institute of International Affairs, WTO Deputy Director General
Chulsu Kim said exports from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South
Korea and the Philippines fell by 3.5 percent last year.

That decline was dwarfed by the sharp fall in imports to those
countries, which tumbled by 30 percent.

Kim said the export boom that had been expected to follow the
depreciation of Asian currencies has "not materialized," and that
the counterparts of the five countries' large surpluses are trade
deficits in fast growing economies, particularly the U.S.