Introduction
Developing Asia remains at the core of global
payment imbalances. Globally, developing
Asia’s net current account surplus amounted
to 36 per cent of the world’s current account
surpluses in 2010, while averaging about 30
per cent during the past decade (see Figure 1).
The region has also accumulated sizable—and
in some cases excessive foreign exchange
reserves since the late 1990s.1 The bulk of
the remaining current account surpluses were
in the Middle East and the Commonwealth
of Independent States. On the other side of
the ledger, the USA continues to be home
for the lion’s share of global current account
deficits
The geographical concentration of current
account imbalances is rather significant in
developing Asia, with the People’s Republic of
China accounting for the lion’s share of the
region’s current account surplus. The most significant
surpluses have been in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), with its current
account surpluses accounting for 48.7 per cent
of Asia’s total for the period 2005–2010.
Excluding Japan, where surpluses have been
large but stable, the PRC’s share of the region’s
current account surplus is nearly 68.2 per cent
over this period. The PRC’s contribution to the
region’s reserves accumulation has been also
substantial-its reserves now account for over
60 per cent of emerging Asia’s total. Then
follow the four newly industrializing economies
(NIEs) of Hong Kong, China; Republic of
Korea (Korea); Taipei,China; and Singapore;
and other large Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) economies In contrast,
several emerging Asian economies—including
India and Vietnam have been running
current account deficits.
While how emerging Asia contributes to
global rebalancing depends critically on the
PRC, the NIEs and larger ASEAN economies
will also have to contribute depending on the
size of their surpluses. The region’s economic
diversity requires a wide-ranging set of policy
measures to tackle the domestic, regional, and
global imbalances. The PRC needs to play a
critical role in the region’s contribution to
global rebalancing—given the large and
increasing size of its economy and external
imbalances [see Asian Development Bank
(ADB) 2009]. But the NIEs and larger ASEAN
economies will also have to contribute,
depending on the size of their surpluses. Many
of the region’s smaller economies also face
country-specific external imbalances, even if
their contribution to the overall global imbalance remains negligible Understanding these
different policy requirements is essential to
achieving more harmonious global, regional,
and domestic rebalancing.
Ultimately, a concerted and coordinated
regional approach will be key to an orderly
global rebalancing process. Concerted policy
adjustments can potentially reinforce this
process through two key channels. First, there
are important positive spillover when countries
work together to boost demand while
avoiding unnecessary adverse movements in
intra-regional exchange rates. Second, enhancing
intra-regional trade offers each of the
region’s economies a high degree of trade
openness—with all associated benefits—even
as the region as a whole becomes less dependent
on extra-regional demand.
Global imbalances and Asia
While running current account surpluses or
deficits, per SE, is not necessarily a cause of
concern for an economy, the current condition
of global payment imbalances is alarming in
their size, persistence, and geographic concentration,
raising significant concerns about
their sustainability. There is no reason why an
economy has to balance its current account
position at all times. In theory, as the result of
voluntary choices of economic entities driven
by the desire for inter-temporal consumption
smoothing, current account imbalances do
not necessarily pose an economic danger.
These imbalances are simply a reflection of
different patterns of savings and investment
behaviour across economic entities, which are
strongly influenced by income growth, trade
volatility, ability to access international
funding, and demographics. Nevertheless,
there is a fundamental concern that deficit
countries cannot go into debt forever. Many
have argued the US current account deficits at
current rates are not sustainable and potentially
destabilizing
Some distinctive characteristics of the
current imbalances provide the ground for
concerns, not least because the deficit countries
(the US in this case) cannot continue building
debts indefinitely. From the perspective of the
developing economies in Asia, the persistent,
large current account surpluses present a
puzzle and involve both explicit and implicit
costs. Economic theory says capital flows from
advanced economies with abundant capital to
developing economies with capital shortages.
Both capital-rich and capital-poor countries
benefit from these flows as they increase
labour productivity in capital-poor countries
and provide higher returns on savings for
capital-rich countries. However, the current
pattern of international capital flows from
developing Asia to the USA casts doubt on the
optimal of the region’s excess savings. A
number of hypotheses have been put forward
to explain the puzzle, such as large fiscal deficits,
declining private savings, and high productivity
growth in the USA; financial
globalization and a global savings glut; and
relatively underdeveloped financial markets,
crisis-induced risk aversion, and exchange rate
pegs in developing Asian economies. None of
these hypotheses seems to provide a clear
answer to why such a pattern has emerged; but
the cost of the global imbalances—whether it is
implicit in terms of the welfare cost of excess
saving and foregone investment benefits of
excess reserves or explicit in terms of the cost
of crisis—is abundantly clear (see Adams and
Park 2009).
Although there is no single explanation for
international payment imbalances, the underlying
cause appears to be the stark differences in
saving and investment behavior across economies.
The striking differences in national saving and investment behaviour must reflect
the different macroeconomic and exchange
rate policies, as well as structural factors—with
the usual suspects being the stage of economic
development, the degree of financial development,
and demographics (see Figures 2 and 3).
In Asia, current account imbalances have
visibly increased since the 1997–98 Asian financial
crisis, suggesting that there must have been
some policy factors in play beyond the longterm
structural factors. For example, large
current account surpluses also derived from
the success of outward-orientated growth strategies
that supported high levels of extra-regional
exports at the expense of bolstering
domestic demand. Strong exports in the aftermath
of the 1997–98 crisis contributed significantly
to the region’s rapid recovery and
growth in the post-crisis period leading up to
the recent global crisis.
The region’s substantially large external
imbalances also reflect its post 1997-98 crisis
efforts to build strong international reserves. In
many of the region’s economies, imbalances
have also come from a determined effort to
build large stockpiles of (gross) international
reserves In response to the 1997-98 Asian
financial crisis, authorities sought self-insurance
against the kinds of capital flow
reversals that occurred then and during other
episodes of systemic stress. This was also done
with an eye to managing stress in international
financial markets.
Nonetheless, the aggregate Asia’s picture
masks important differences in external positions
across the region and over time. Although
Asia, in aggregate, has had large current
account surpluses since the 1997–98 financial
crisis, this masks important differences in external
positions across the region and over time
(Figure 4) Different structural reasons underlie
a rather wide spectrum of current account
imbalances across the region. In the PRC,
unusually high savings rates (and unusually
low consumption rates) reflect its rapid GDP
growth, unfavourable demographic changes,
inadequate social safety nets, and largely underdeveloped
financial markets unable to efficiently channel these savings into productive
investment In the Asian crisis-affected countries,
sharp declines in investment rates following
a period of over-investment and more
stringent evaluation of financial risks in the
post-crisis may provide an explanation In
India and Vietnam, relatively large fiscal deficits
may explain the current account deficits.
Meanwhile, most emerging Asian economies
have accelerated the pace of reserves
accumulation since the Asian financial crisis
(Figure 5). The increase was largely due to a
combination of sustained current account surpluses
and persistent exchange market intervention.
The exceptions were India and Vietnam, where reserves were largely ‘borrowed’
in the sense that the reserve build-up derived
from large financial and capital account
surpluses that exceeded the current account
deficits.