Thailand joins Asia's public fiscal & financial management network

BANGKOK, June 7 (TNA) - Thailand has joined the Asian public fiscal & financial management network, comprising 12 countries in the region and relevant international organizations. The networking nations and organizations include Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Timor Leste, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mongolia, China, South Korea and Thailand, as well as the government-run Australian AID (AusAID) and the US-based World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Robert R. Taliercio, a chief economist and head of the World Bank's public sector management group for East Asia and the Pacific, on Thursday told a workshop in Bangkok, at which the Asian public fiscal & financial management network was introduced, that each government should keep following up the updated world situation and revising national policies based on lessons learned from global incidents, amid challenging world fiscal and financial management-related issues caused by vulnerable global economic conditions, particularly those in the European debt-ridden economy. Taliercio also suggested that each government's practical management of public coffer relies on proper information or database; while the Asian public fiscal & financial management network will assist each nation on how to learn lessons from past mistakes to improve and implement its fiscal and financial management more efficiently. Dong Yeon Kim, South Korean Strategy and Finance Vice Minister, said he believed that experiences exchanged among the network's member countries would lead to Seoul's more efficiently-improved fiscal and financial management, covering employment, to cope with, probably, a global economic crisis, acknowledging that South Korea's government budget deficit has accounted for over 60 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Annette Dixon, a World Bank director for Southeast Asia, assessed that the Thai government's more loans to finance flood prevention plans should not worsen the country's public debt burden, as the total state borrowing now accounts for 40 per cent of the country's GDP, considered a controllable level, recommending that the Thai government, however, speed up its investment of new infrastructure development projects to support national economic development and growth in the long run. (TNA)