Chang Yong Rhee: Enhancing East Asia's regional financial safety net

Keynote speech by Mr Chang Yong Rhee, Governor of the Bank of Korea, at a Roundtable on East Asia's Financial Safety Net, 22 August 2022. 

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
01 September 2022

Introduction

Thank you, Governor Shamsiah. I am honored to participate in this roundtable on East Asia's regional financial safety net. And it is a great pleasure to see my old friends and colleagues again, though I dare not name everyone due to time constraints.

We are living in a time of heightened uncertainty. After a decade of persistently low growth, low inflation, and low interest rates since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), inflation is back and has soared to levels not seen in recent decades. Central banks in major economies are raising interest rates rapidly, causing unwelcomed spillovers into emerging economies such as capital flow volatility and currency depreciation.

Fortunately, many East Asian economies have strengthened the financial safety net and adopted better macroeconomic policy frameworks following the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and the GFC. As a result, the present moment seems different from 1997 or the taper tantrum period, but we cannot be complacent. In this time of heightened uncertainty and market stress, Governor Shamsiah and BNM colleagues have shown very timely leadership in hosting a roundtable on this important topic.