Vietnam Currency Discussion Board

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Exchange rates are key economic challenge: UN

VNECONOMY updated: 20/04/2007





Managing exchange rates is the leading challenge facing Asia-Pacific economies this year, according to a survey issued by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) yesterday.

Jonathan Pincus, senior country economist for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said it was very difficult to manage these rates which have an enormous impact on import-export balances. Viet Nam needed a flexible system of exchange rate management, he said, in order to fit in with the rest of the region and world.

The UNESCAP survey also predicted a growth rate in 2007 of 7.4 per cent in developing economies in the region, slightly off 2006’s rate of 7.9 per cent.

The survey also predicted that inflation would be less this year in developing countries in the region, at 3.8 per cent.

In its survey report, UNESCAP singled out gender inequality as a signal matter having a great cost on regional growth and prosperity.

Pham Lan Huong, deputy director of the Ministry of Trade’s Department for Trade Policy and International Integration Studies, said the Asia-Pacific region was losing US$24-42 billion per year due to restrictions on the access of women to educational opportunities and employment.

UNESCAP suggested free universal primary education, more local schools, more WCs for schoolgirls, and long-term education programmes for women as ways to encourage parents to send daughters to school.

It urged an end to regulations that limited the ability of women to own assets or hold certain occupations, as well as providing free meals and mobile health services for school children and pregnant women.

India, Malaysia and Indonesia, each with religious and cultural traditions of male dominance, were considered to have the greatest gender inequality in education and employment, while Viet Nam was less impacted by this problem, Huong said.

Viet Nam ranked the second in the region after New Zealand in the percentage of women sitting in the nation’s governing parliamentary body, with women constituting 27 per cent of National Assembly members, said Pincus.

Source: Vietnam News

http://www.vneconomy.vn/eng/index.php?param=article&catid=04&id=6616e0f2741913