ISAS Insights

The painful structural changes that much of emerging Asia went through since the 1997-98 crisis, as well as the relatively more cautious approach towards capital account liberalisation and foreign bank entry in a number of the Asian economies appear to have helped to reduce the extent of damage that these economies faced in the recent global financial crisis. The region has clearly suffered relatively less than many other emerging economies, particularly those in Europe. Indeed, with the exception of Pakistan, the vast majority of the emerging economies that have recently obtained crisis-related loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been from emerging Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), broadly termed Eastern Europe hereafter.3 Among the Eastern European borrowers that have already negotiated Stand-by Arrangement loans are Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus and Latvia.