Currency switch for trade starts next month

bangkokpost ^ | Sunday 09 September 2001

[jedi150]

Currency switch for trade starts next month

                   Each side will offer credit facility as well

                   Malaysia and Thailand will start trading with each other in their own currencies for 34
                   products by the end of the month, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
                   said yesterday.

                   Mr Mahathir discussed the trade arrangement during a meeting with Prime Minister
                   Thaksin Shinawatra.

                   Mr Thaksin was visiting Malaysia to lend moral support to Thai athletes competing
                   in the 21st Southeast Asian Games.

                   ``He [Thaksin] urges that trade between Malaysia and Thailand be done in each
                   other's currency,'' Mr Mahathir said after the meeting in Putrajaya, Malaysia's new
                   administrative capital.

                   Malaysia and Thailand, key members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
                   (Asean), signed a memorandum of agreement in July directing their respective central
                   banks to enter into a bilateral payment arrangement (BPA).

                   To boost the arrangement, trading for 14 Malaysian products and 20 items produced
                   by Thailand will be done in ringgit or baht by the end of this month.

                   The BPA also allows both the Malaysian and Thai central banks to provide credit
                   facilities in the two currencies.

                   Many Southeast Asian currencies are pegged against the US dollar and are
                   vulnerable to the movements of the US unit.

[jedi150]

Creeping toward Hemispherical monetary systems?

[NativeNewYorker]

Hardly. Both crony-capitalist nations have nasty currency problems, and this tiny accord isn't even a proverbial bandage on the massive wound of faulty capital structures.