Southeast Asia faces economic battle

Southeast Asia faces a battle to survive the global economic meltdown, Thailand's premier said Saturday, while expressing hope that the region can agree on the path towards recovery.
Abhisit Vejjajiva told his counterparts at the opening of the annual Association of Southeast Nations (Asean) summit that the world would be watching the region's performance, once a bright spot in the global economy.
"ASEAN is at the frontier of an economic battle and recovery. We will be severely tested from now on, both as a group and as a part of the broader Asian region," Abhisit said at the summit in the beach resort of Hua Hin.
"As the financial crisis deepens the world will look towards our region for action and confidence, which is exactly what we in Asean are set out to do," said Abhisit, an Oxford-educated economist.
Asean's export-driven economies are starting to suffer as their markets fall prey to the financial crisis. Financial hub Singapore is in recession and Thailand's economy shrank in the last quarter of 2008.
Foreign ministers from the 10-member bloc and from China, Japan and South Korea agreed last week to set up a 120-billion-dollar emergency foreign exchange fund for the region but did not give a date for setting it up.