Reply #32: Bickering delays Asian currency unit launch

[54anickel]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fba697ae-bcfb-11da-bdf6-0000779e2340.html

Plans to launch an Asian Currency Unit (Acu) to help develop regional bond markets and promote monetary co-operation have been delayed by political and technical arguments over which currencies to include and how the weighting system would work, say people familiar with the project.

“There is agitation over which currencies are to be in the Acu,” said one official at the Asian Development Bank, citing disagreements among Asian governments over the incorporation of the currencies of Taiwan – the island claimed by China – and of Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

Haruhiko Kuroda, the ADB’s Japanese president, strongly supports increased financial co-operation in Asia and an eventual monetary union. He had hoped to launch the Acu as early as this month but ADB officials now say the process is unlikely to be completed until after the bank’s annual meeting in May.

Giovanni Capannelli, senior economist in the ADB’s Office of Regional Economic Integration, said the name might even be changed to the softer “Asian Currency Index” to avoid giving the impression that the proposed unit was the equivalent of the European Currency Unit that foreshadowed the euro.

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