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APEC: Financial Crisis to be Overcome in 18 Months

The global financial crisis can be overcome within 18 months by acting "quickly and decisively," Pacific Rim leaders said Sunday as they pledged to make food cheaper, governments cleaner and markets more open.

But the 21 leaders, who represent more than half the world's economic power, offered few details of their recovery plan. The biggest accomplishment of the two-day summit was broadening support for the Washington Declaration made last weekend by major economies, pledging to maintain free trade despite domestic pressures.

"We are convinced that we can overcome this crisis in a period of 18 months," the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum said. "We have already taken urgent and extraordinary steps to stabilize our financial sectors and strengthen economic growth."

The words of confidence were added early Sunday to a declaration the leaders had signed off on the previous day. Delegates from several countries said the changes were made overnight at the request of the summit's host, Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

"We have agreed that this meeting produce a clear and firm statement that breaks the vicious cycle of anguish and uncertainty," Garcia said. "We're going to beat the crisis united as the world's peoples, governments and businesses."

The 18-month timeline fits with a calculation by the International Monetary Fund, which forecast developed economies would grow barely 0.1 percent in 2009, and that the world would emerge from the crisis the following year.

But some delegates and analysts were skeptical that the 18-month timeline was much more than wishful thinking. A senior staffer of one country's delegation burst into laughter when pressed for details about how the leaders knew they could accomplish it.

"I think it's a good idea to send a signal to the markets," said Vinod Aggarwal, director of the APEC Study Center at the University of California-Berkeley. "I don't think it will make that much difference, but I don't think it hurts."

He said it was more important that the leaders agreed to send ministers to Geneva next month to jump-start the so-called Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. Concern over the global financial crisis has injected new urgency into the negotiations, which collapsed in July.

The APEC leaders also said they were deeply concerned about instability in food prices, were committed to battling corruption and piracy, and supported "decisive and effective long-term cooperation" to combat climate change.

The leaders called for greater APEC participation in the IMF and other multilateral lenders. Japan said last week it was ready to lend up to $100 billion to the Washington-based lending organization, but China has so far resisted entreaties to dig into its $1.9 trillion in reserves.

The summit could be the final foreign trip for George W. Bush as U.S. president. Barack Obama replaces him on Jan. 20, and delegates in Lima said there was little incentive to propose more concrete action without Obama's presence.

Obama, who did not send representatives to Lima, announced a plan Saturday to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 and prepared to introduce leaders of his economic team Monday.

News source: Yahoo World News

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# akshay says :
12 January, 2009 [ 07:51 ]

At the time of financial crises we need to come together united and try to solve the problems which are responsible for such a hazard. We need to overcome it. It is meant to bring calm to the population and markets and display government strength and stability. As a large number of people spend their money in movies, making films, sports, <a href="http://www.freegamblinggame.net">free internet gambling</a> which are not free, people lose a large sum of money there in such stuffs which should be minimized as the world is going through a phase where a little wastage of money could be matter of remorse.
          

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