President Ramos says Asian miracle not over

President Ramos says Asian miracle not over

MANILA (Reuters): Philippine President Fidel Ramos expressed optimism yesterday that East Asia would weather the currency meltdown that has led some countries in the region to seek help from the International Monetary Fund.

"The gloom that now pervades the Asian scene does not necessarily mean that the Asian economic miracle is over, as some western analysts have lately been saying," Ramos said in his year-end report to the nation.

"East Asia has overcome far more serious challenges -- and will do so again," he said, adding that he expected the region's financial turmoil to calm this year.

Ramos' upbeat predictions came on a day when Asia's financial markets took yet another heavy battering.

Southeast Asian currencies plunged to new lows, taking several stock markets down with them. The Philippine peso touched an all- time low of 45.209 to the dollar.

Ramos said the World Bank had forecast an average gross domestic product growth rate of 7.6 percent for East Asia during 1997-2000.

That figure, although lower than those of the early 1990s, will still make East Asia the fastest growing region over the next 10 years, he said.

The crisis "underscores the lack of transparency and supervision in financial systems of many of our neighboring economies following market deregulation and the flow of foreign capital into the region," he added.

The Philippines was a "victim and not an author" of the financial storm now engulfing Asia, he said.

However, "...most of the medicine now being prescribed to end the crisis are precisely what we have zealously and effectively put in place in our country after the long years of dictatorship," Ramos said.

The reforms the Philippines adopted after the 20-year rule of the late President Ferdinand Marcos ended in 1986 include transparency in finance and economic affairs, safeguards against crony capitalism and the institution of democracy, he said.

"As currencies and stock prices have dropped to levels unknown in a quarter century...our best policy is to look the crisis in the eye," he said.

"For the Philippines, it is just a matter of time, of good management and of resolute leadership," Ramos said.

"It will profit us nothing to lull ourselves into a false senses of optimism. But neither should we give in to panic and pessimism, which will only delay our recovery and put us in further difficulties," he said.