Dear colleagues and friends,

On behalf of the Asia School of Business, thank you everyone for being here this afternoon.  Most of all I would like to express our profound gratitude to Professor Joseph Stiglitz for sharing his valuable time with us today.  Professor Stiglitz, we deeply appreciate your contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the future of the global economy.  Your remarks here today have been truly enriching, prescient and thought provoking.  It has been a great privilege to have this opportunity to listen to you today.

It was about twenty-eight years ago, when you were the Chief Economist at the World Bank, that we first encountered.  It was a tumultuous time for the East Asian region.  It was the time of the Asian Financial Crisis experienced in 1997-1998.  I recall, even at that time, your views were not quite the conventional wisdom that had prevailed in Washington.  It was always encouraging for us to hear that there were alternative perspectives that took into consideration issues that concerned growth and development.  The experience of this crisis had two important consequences for us – the drive towards building our resilience and to becoming more cohesive as a region.  This fortified our ability to effectively live through a number of other upheavals and turmoils – not to say that we were unscathed but we were not disrupted and were able to rise to the challenges and advance forward.

Then it was in 2008, in response to the great financial crisis, that had already erupted in 2007, in the Developed World, that the President of the United Nations General Assembly established a Commission led by Professor Joseph Stiglitz to propose reforms that would prevent such crisis in the international financial system in the future.  It was my honour to have been a member of that commission.  It was probably one of the high points of my career.  The report which was released in 2009 have had its findings become the subject of continued discussions and debate at high level international forums and its ideas have influenced policy discussions.  The report, however, probably made its biggest difference in Asia – where – wherever we could, we sought to strengthen our systems and financial infrastructure in the region.  Our motivation was that we wanted to be best positioned to manage future turbulence and turmoils.  Collectively, we now reap the payoffs.  East Asia now has emerged as a force to be reckoned with.

In his lecture today, Professor Stiglitz has highlighted that we will continue to be navigating in tumultuous waters brought about by the new politics and the new economic policies that are intertwined with the old issues that have continued to plague the world economy.  On top of this, he highlights the new set of problems presented by AI.  Now sixteen years later, he has led a new commission whose report was just launched in June this year – that addressed the Debt and Development crisis to promote sustainable development. Addressing these vulnerabilities are key to avoiding future financial crises and economic setbacks.

The global circumstances going forward appear to be bleak.  But as an optimist, I believe it is not quite so dismal.  There is still an opportunity to navigate ourselves in the right direction despite the turbulence so that we will arrive at the aspired destination.  For the emerging and developing economies, we can leverage on our comparative advantage – our agility to adjust and therefore, the ability to do better and thus contribute positively to the global economy.  Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in showing our appreciation to Professor Joseph Stiglitz for the strong messages that he has conveyed to us today to enhance the prospects for the world economy.