ADB says ASEAN currency long way off

Cebu, Philippines (ANTARA News) - Southeast Asia's prospects for economic integration are good but any single currency is many years away, the president of the Asian Development Bank said Saturday.

The 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has already achieved "substantial economic integration," Haruhiko Kuroda said in an interview in the Philippines on the sidelines of bloc's annual summit.

The group is looking to create a free-trade zone by 2015, five years earlier than first planned, to help cope with the growing economic challenge of regional heavyweights China and India.

Kuroda said that while ASEAN aims for that goal, the formation of a single currency unit, similar to the euro in Europe, was a long way off.

"It's a natural development for ASEAN but it will not be easy. Such a move will be a major political challenge for ASEAN," he was quoted by AFP as saying.

Talk about a single currency union for ASEAN has gone on for years and gained momentum following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, but it is no longer seen as a high priority within the bloc.

He said the crisis has "now been blown away and most countries within the region are seeing substantial economic growth."

The Manila-based ADB is forecasting East Asian growth to be around 4.4 percent this year, slightly lower than the 4.9 percent for 2006.

Kuroda said that although economies were growing, ASEAN still faced many challenges -- and that one of the biggest was income disparity between the rich and poor states within the bloc.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It accounts for about one-sixth of the world's population.