March 19, 1999
Web posted at: 1:33 a.m. EST (0633 GMT)

HANOI, Vietnam (CNN) -- Southeast Asian finance ministers launched talks Friday aimed at drafting a blueprint to drag the region out of its economic slump and develop an early warning system to prevent a repeat of the crisis.

The two-day meeting, also attended by key officials from Japan, South Korea, China and the International Monetary Fund, was expected to approve a new "surveillance mechanism" designed to monitor economic performance and alert governments to financial concerns on the horizon.

The Asian crisis, which began with the devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997, took almost everyone by surprise because many Asian economies operated in a web of secrecy with little concrete information on macro-economic developments or corporate performance.

Lack of transparency was not much of a problem while the Asian "Tiger" economies were recording spectacular double-digit growth rates during the 1980s and early 1990s.

But the bankers and investors that were caught by the crisis now demand far more information if they are to pump fresh capital into the region to help speed up economic recovery.

Officials say better information and financial transparency should attract more foreign capital into the region and minimize the chances of a repeat of the kind of catastrophic meltdown seen across Asia over the last two years.

Vietnamese Finance Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung told Reuters that information flows needed to be improved because the world's economies were interdependent.

"The world is integrating," he said as he arrived for Friday's meeting. "Even changes in South America may also impact Asia. Trade and investment relations are on a large scale."

He said the Hanoi meeting, organized by the Association of South East Asian Nations, would concentrate on enhancing common supervision to identify and settle problems quickly.

Officials from ASEAN -- grouping Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- are expected to press Japan at the meeting to speed up disbursement of funds from its $30 billion aid package for Asia.

Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Eisuke Sakakibara said late on Thursday that Japan was considering offering extra help to Asian countries on top of the money it had already earmarked.

Arriving in Hanoi, Philippines Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu said the Asian finance ministers meeting would also look at ways of building a social safety net to help the region's poor cope with poverty.

"We will be discussing providing a system to protect the most vulnerable sector of society," he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.