> Zeti Appointed To U.N. Task Force on Global Financial System

Bank Negara Malaysia Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz has been appointed to a high-level task force being set up by the United Nations to examine the possible reform of the global financial system, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the wake of the current economic turmoil.

Dr Zeti has been holding the post of Bank Negara governor since 2000 and is the only woman in Asia and among very few in the world to be a top central banker.

United Nations General Assembly President,Miguel D'Escoto, who announced the full composition of a high-level task force he is setting up, said Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and is a former chief economist at the World Bank, will chair the panel known as the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.

"The task force will suggest steps that member states can take to secure a more stable global economic order," he said in a statement issued by the UN News Service.

Many economies are either into recession or are slipping into recession as a result of the financial crisis brought on by the subprime credit crisis in the United States.

Others in the panel include another Malaysian, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the current Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), who at one time was lecturer with Univesiti Malaya and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia, who is a former Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

Also in the panel are Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Professor of Economics at the Institute dEtudes Politiques de Paris in France, Avinash Persaud of Barbados, who is Chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited and Yaga Venugopal Reddy, former governor of India's Reserve Bank.

Japans Eisuke Sakakibara who once was dubbed "Mr Yen," and is currently Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo is also in the panel, along with Chukwuma Soludo, the Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank and Chinas Yu Yongding, the Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics.

When Mr D'Escoto announced the formation of the panel last month, he said that "there is growing recognition that the current turmoil in the financial system cannot be solved through piecemeal responses at the national and regional levels but requires a coordinated effort at the global level." - Bernama.