The Asian Financial Crisis will be a priority in our economic discussions.

Clare Short: The purpose of the meeting, which was attended by a member of the Department for International Development's Asia division, was to discuss the social consequences for Indonesia of the Asian Financial Crisis and prospects for mobilising additional support from multilateral and bilateral sources.

Mr. Beard: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the likely impact of the Asian Financial Crisis on his forecasts for the UK and other European Union economies.

The Fund, which will provide assistance in assessing the poverty impact of the Asian Financial Crisis and help with financial restructuring, will be managed by the World Bank.

Higher interest rates, a more severe impact on our economy as a result of the Asian Financial Crisis and the impact of the strong pound could all undermine economic conditions.

The IMF and the World Bank have moved some distance away from the old Washington consensus of free trade and open financial markets, above all, in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis.

However, that was a one-off because it was the result of the Asian Financial Crisis.

That figure, as we know, was the result of the Asian Financial Crisis and it is important that it does not distort the figures for previous and subsequent years in which 198WH cover dropped to as low as 13 per cent.

In the past decade, with one or two blips such as in 1998, during the Asian Financial Crisis, our exports to Taiwan have shown a steady upward trend.

Colombia has recently suffered its worst recession for 70 years and has endured knock-on effects from the Asian Financial Crisis and last year's devaluation of the Brazilian real.

For example, when one considers the things achieved by G8 since the Birmingham Summit which this country hosted, one sees that we have secured substantial reforms of the international financial architecture in response to the Asian Financial Crisis.

In reaction to the Asian Financial Crisis, measures were recommended to assist in warning about, preventing and mitigating the effects of sudden international financial flows.

Indonesia grew with horrible corruption and repression, but the beauty of the lessons of the Asian Financial Crisis - provided that we can help people and that the suffering is not too great - is that we have reached the point where that model is not sustainable.

After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Indonesia was left to wallow in chaos without the international financial organisations making any serious attempt to help, while the rest of the world humiliated Indonesia in East Timor.

The Asian Financial Crisis hit Thailand the very day after the handover in Hong Kong.

For example, I remember in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis when there was substantial and persistent selling pressure out of unit trusts that had specialised in the affected countries, which meant that the trusts sold off the most liquid, and often the best, investments to repay their investors.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China onSaturday 30 June, will he confirm that the success of the idea of "one country, two systems" negotiated by Premier Deng Xiaoping, my noble friend Lady Thatcher and my noble and learned friend Lord Howe has borne the test of time, despite the Asian Financial Crisis andthe bird flu epidemic; and that it is a tribute to the courage and vision of those in the early 1980s, tothe sensitive and enlightened way in which those responsible have implemented it, and to the resilience and dynamism of the people of Hong Kong?

Recently, that has been seen in the collapse of the equity market in 1987, the Asian Financial Crisis and the dotcom boom.

It played an extremely important leadership role in the Asian Financial Crisis and it will do so now.

I am also concerned that the International Monetary Fund still shows a capacity to repeat the mistakes, in its obsession with free market solutions, that it made in 1998 as a consequence of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

Following the Asian Financial Crisis, we created what is now known as the G20 to bring together emerging markets and developed countries to address the serious economic problems of the time.

My Lords, 10 years ago after the Asian Financial Crisis, the then Chancellor and now Prime Minister returned from a meeting of the G7 indicating that what was needed was an expansion of the Financial Stability Forum, the introduction of international financial standards and codes, greater transparency, early warning systems for the International Monetary Fund, and a more central role for the G20 because the G7 was somehow insufficient to deal with problems of this nature.

In 1998, in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, it was this Government who persuaded the G7 to set up the Financial Stability Forum, the intergovernmental think tank for international financial regulation.

The response to the Asian Financial Crisis was obvious: the establishment of the Financial Stability Forum.