Turbulence zone

The 24 countries of the asia-pacific zone were amongst the first to see their stock exchange rates plummet. The financial crisis particularly disturbed the markets of the zone’s emerging countries, of China, but also the Japanese economy. This financial tsunami lent a particular edge to discussions taking place during the conference of the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Chambers (CACCI) on 22 and 23 October in Manila (Philippines). The initial programme around the theme of “the reinforcement of the economic role played by the zone on the world scale” was respected, but the crisis cooled off projects underway.“The government is asking us to face up to the situation. It will take time to get to the other side of this crisis, but the tourist and tertiary sectors generally remain strong in the Philippines,” states Crisanto Frianeza, Gene-ral Secretary of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce. “We can host services capable of being relocated, such as call centres, accounting, etc. But growth will slow down. It has already fallen by one point this year. One of the conference objectives was to allow our SMEs to meet companies in the region, to allow them to envisage doing business internationally. For the moment, cooperation projects in the zone remain limited. We are working towards the formulation of a free trade agreement with Japan, but this agreement is not advancing quickly. The same can be said for the agreement to link the South of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the North of Australia and the Sultanate of Brunei. This project is making no headway due to a lack of concrete business projects. An agreement protocol has been signed, but the business community surrounding this agreement has had no concrete opportunities to carry out trade.” This observation is however not inter-preted as a life sentence and Crisanto Frianeza remains fairly confident, notably thanks to contacts established during the event.