Where now for Asia?

The economies of the Asia Pacific region enjoyed a rapid recovery in 2009, helped by a combination of large fiscal and monetary stimulus measures. Attention has now turned to how policy will be normalised to avoid inflationary pressures and speculative bubbles fuelled by very loose monetary policy. The two major concerns today are inflation and speculative bubbles. Inflation concerns have risen as headline inflation rates have picked up from last year’s negative levels. A large contribution to the upturn has been the base effect of comparing current prices with those at the worst point o...