Asia needs open regionalism: US Treasury

Asia should seek outward-oriented economic co-operation, rather than creating a fortress region that excludes the United States or Europe, a senior US Treasury Department official said on Friday.
US Treasury Under-secretary Tim Adams also said it would be wrong for Asian countries to create "institutions or processes that try to supplant international institutions, namely the IMF (International Monetary Fund)."
"What we don't want to see is a fortress Asia that excludes the United States or Europe," Adams, in Tokyo for the World Economic Forum on East Asia, told reporters.
Asia has been promoting economic and financial co-operation in the region as they still have bitter memories that the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not provide them enough help during Asia's financial crisis in 1997-98.
While the United States and the IMF, which opposed to a proposal to create an Asian Monetary Fund in the late 1990s, have supported Asia's growing co-operation, Washington remains concerned that it may end up closing off the outside world. With respect to the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) - Asia's six-year-old network of bilateral currency swap arrangements to prevent a currency turmoil - Adams called for greater transparency.
He added that should be "assurance this is a complement to what the IMF does and not something that would make it more complex... We're going to watch this closely and want to be involved as closely as we possibly can."
At a panel of the World Economic Forum, Adams said on Thursday that the introduction of a common currency in Asia is still way off and the United States does not see an Asian Currency Unit (ACU) as a competitor to the dollar.
"The ACU is an index of currencies, a way of gauge movements of currencies in the region vis-a-vis each other," he said in a closed-door speech to the forum.
"We do no see the ACU as a competitor to the dollar, any more than we see the J.P. Morgan exchange rate indices as a competitor to the dollar," he added.
He distributed a copy of his speech to reporters on Friday.