UN picked Jomo and Zeti for financial panel

PETALING JAYA: Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz and Malaysian economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram have been appointed members of the United Nations’ high-level task force to examine possible reforms of the global financial system.

The task force was formed as a result of the current global economic turmoil.


Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz
The Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Mone-tary and Financial System would also look into the possible reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the United Nations said in a statement. The commission would also suggest measures to secure a more stable global economic order.

Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, will chair the commission.

Other members include Jean-Paul Fitoussi, professor of economics at the Institute d’Etudes Politiques de Paris in France; Avinash Persaud of Barbados, who is chairman of Intelligence Capital Ltd, and Yaga Venugopal Reddy, former governor of India’s Reserve Bank.

Also on the panel are Japan’s Eisuke Sakakibara, who is professor at Waseda University in Tokyo; Chukwuma Soludo, the Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank; and China’s Yu Yongding, the director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics.

Jomo, a former Universiti Malaya lecturer, is the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ assistant secretary-general for economic development.

UN General Assembly president Miguel D’Escoto, who announced the formation of the panel last month, had noted that a coordinated effort at the global level was needed to resolve the current financial turmoil.(TheStar)