Reforms can ease inflation, Australia tells APEC
Economic reforms can help combat the internal inflationary pressures that many Asian nations are struggling with, Australia's Treasurer Wayne Swan said on Monday.
Swan was speaking at the opening of a meeting of regional Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministers to discuss improvements that governments can make to boost competition.
Asian economies are battling record levels of inflation, fuelled by high food and oil prices, which threaten to derail fast economic growth.
Swan said emerging and developing APEC countries are forecast to grow by 8.1 percent in 2008, but such rapid growth could worsen already high levels of inflation.
"Internally generated inflationary pressure can exacerbate the effects of high food and energy prices on consumer price inflation," he said.
But economic reforms could help ease inflation by improving productivity, Swan told assembled ministers and officials from China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and other members of the APEC grouping.
While the 21-member APEC has traditionally focused trade issues, this week's meeting in Melbourneaddresses internal or "behind the border" reforms.
Swan said a failure to investment in Australia in recent years had led to capacity constraints and shortages of skilled labour, contributing to inflationary pressures. But he said the new Labor government, elected last November, had created investment funds to deal with these shortfalls.
|
08-03-2008, 08:50 PM
Linear Mode
