Caracas, 12 January. Today the Permanent Secretary of SELA proposed setting up regional risk assessment agencies that offer "new insights" into economies of the developing countries.

Moneta shared this idea in the framework of the II Annual Meeting of the Latin American-Caribbean/Asia Pacific Forum, held on Monday, 11 January and Tuesday 12 January in Tokyo, sponsored by the Latin American Economic System (SELA), the Ministry of Finance of Japan, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

This Argentinean diplomat then pointed out that risk classification agencies and their importance to national economies has rocketed as a direct result of the global dimensions of economics and finance.

Moneta referred to "the leverage these new private and transnational actors have gained and whose actions are aimed at meeting the needs of short-term financial market operators make us reflect on the possibility of counting on regional agencies to assess risks from a less immediate development perspective."

Similarly Moneta added that "new risk evaluation agencies that contribute new perceptions and concert a variety of approaches could fulfill an extremely useful role."

He then went on to suggest that biregional risk assessment agencies could also be set up for the region of Latin America/Caribbean and Asia-Pacific. In this manner, the regions could work jointly to "examine specific coordinated action possibilities to participate in the design of a new structure for the international financial system. In this respect, our countries should participate actively in decision-making fora."

Moneta is of the opinion that the "current systemic crisis and its serious implications" for all of Latin America and the Asia Pacific should make us give serious thought to designing proposals on the functioning of the institutions existing since the Bretton Woods agreements.

Among other proposals, Moneta referred to the fact that the world financial system needs to be able to fall back on an effective and reliable early warning system for crises; find an "adequate balance" between economic openness policies and capital flow controls; learn to "manage booms instead of only the periods of recession" and define and implement "good practices" for the management of national financial systems.

The Latin American-Caribbean and Asia Pacific Forum, a group that harbours high level personalities of both regions, was established in 1997 as a result of a SELA initiative. At this meeting, which counted on the participation of representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Japan, among other countries, as well as international organizations, focus was placed on examining proposals aimed at preventing crisis such as the one triggered in Asia, which has rocked the world since July 1997. The proposals forged from this meeting will be made available to the governments of both regions.

Similarly, time was devoted to looking into possibilities, that extend beyond times of crisis, for cooperation between Latin America-Caribbean and Asia, whose very differences give rise to these regions’ complementarity.

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