"Asia is rebounding fast from the global financial crisis. Initially, the impact on the region was extremely severe, with output in most countries contracting by more than even those nations that were at the epicenter of the crisis. But now Asia is surging ahead as the world pulls out of recession. For India, the recovery is expected to strengthen in the coming quarters, led by private domestic demand.

The other key driver of Asia's recovery has been the region's rapid, forceful and comprehensive policy response. In many countries, government fiscal positions were sounder, monetary policies were more credible, and corporate and bank balance sheets were sturdier than at any time in the past. This gave Asia the space to cut interest rates sharply and adopt large fiscal stimulus packages. As a result, overall domestic demand has held up remarkably well, despite weak private demand."

"Indonesia's economic growth accelerated for the first time in more than a year as lower interest rates and a strife-free presidential election stoked consumer spending. Southeast Asia's largest economy expanded 4.2 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier after gaining 4 percent in the previous three months.

Other Asian economies also performed better in the third quarter than earlier this year. The Vietnamese economy expanded 5.8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, accelerating from 4.5 percent in the previous three months. Singapore's gross domestic product grew an annualized 14.9 percent last quarter from the previous three months, the second consecutive expansion."

"Nearly 200 million children in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and health problems due to poor nutrition in their early years, the U.N. children's foundation UNICEF said. However, the percentage of children with retarded growth in Asia fell to 30 percent last year from 44 percent in 1990. India, the world's second most-populous country, continues to have a high rate of children under 5 years old suffering from retarded growth, roughly 60.8 million.

Undernourished children often have poor physical health and slower mental development. When the problem is widespread, as in India and Afghanistan, it undermines those countries' ability to improve their economies and eradicate poverty. Insufficient nutrition in children under 2 years old can permanently harm the body's ability to ward off and overcome diseases and damage a child's social and mental development. Stunted growth can rarely be corrected."

"No visitor to Altyn Kazyk, a shantytown on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, can ignore the stinking smoke rising from piles of smoldering waste. Residents say it floats over the settlement day and night, and it only takes half-an-hour here to induce a strong headache. This is not the only health hazard threatening the collection of small, unpainted clay houses. There is a gas pipeline running along the edge of the waste dump, a burial site for sick livestock and some of the homes are even built on top of human graves.

But despite the harsh living conditions in Altyn Kazyk, locals are frightened that municipal plans to tear down the shanty town will leave them worse off than before. Residents are campaigning for their homes to be given legal status before they are demolished, thus guaranteeing them compensation or a plot of land. The majority of the 1,000 settlers came from the impoverished south of Kyrgyzstan to seek work in the capital, located in the more economically-developed north of the country."

"The Pacific is faced with an economic tsunami in the form of the global economic and financial crisis. More households will find themselves sliding into poverty, while others will find it increasingly hard to make ends meet. The urban poor, small scale and subsistence farmers, low skilled workers, internal-migrants and immigrants will find themselves facing more hardship as a result of the crisis. If no appropriate action is taken, the lives of many Pacific peoples, especially women and children, stand to be shattered.

The full impact of the global economic crisis has not yet been felt in the Pacific. This gives a small window of opportunity to Pacific Island governments to put together more thoughtful and effective policies that not only buffer the effects of the current crisis but also build resilience for future crises. Pacific Island governments can use this crisis to jump start a new development paradigm, one in which social expenditure on children and women is at the heart of a more inclusive and sustainable pattern of economic growth in the region."

"Vietnam's central bank on Wednesday lifted a 1-1/2-year-old ban on gold imports in a bid to stabilize the market after a sharp rise in prices helped drive the country's dong currency to a record low. The ban on gold imports since May 2008 led to a gap between domestic and international prices, and recently traders say that spread, plus the rise in gold prices globally, triggered a surge in demand for dollars.

Central bank rules allow the dong to trade with the dollar within a band of 5 percent on either side of a reference rate it sets each day. Traditionally, the Vietnamese use gold for savings, jewelry and real estate transactions but when inflation is high, many choose gold or the U.S. dollar to hedge against inflation."

"While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan's natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked -- Uzbekistan. With a population of 27 million, Uzbekistan is Central Asia 's most populous and dominant power. A conservative fiscal policy since 1991, including inconvertibility of the national currency, the som, has shielded its citizens from the hyperinflation that ravaged other former Soviet republics, but the policy previously diminished potential foreign investment.

Unlike its energy-rich neighbors to the West, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, nearly 80 percent of Uzbekistan's production, about 48.4 bcm, is currently reserved for domestic use at heavily subsidized rates. Of the remaining 12 bcm of natural gas that Uzbekistan exports, more than half currently goes to Russia, with the remainder to neighboring Central Asian states. For now, Uzbekistan remains largely a transit country rather than a net energy exporter in its own right."

"Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders have set the goal of realizing free trade in its region by 2010 for developed members and 2020 for developing ones, while officials maintain that the grouping's nonbinding arrangements have accelerated economic integration by moving beyond broad trade liberalization to specifically reducing business costs and barriers through regulatory reforms. Comprising 21 countries and regions, it is one of the foremost economic groupings in the world. Together, the member economies of the APEC forum account for about half of global trade.

But amid all these stellar credentials and achievements, skeptics of APEC still see it as one of many international institutions that fail to have any clout beyond mere talk. Other than its reliance on consensus, they also point to APEC coming up short during the Asian financial crisis and its relative unimportance in light of more pressing issues of the day such as terrorism and climate change in recent years."

"A partnership of government and international development agencies have announced a $24 million grant package which aims to improve access to markets, health and education services among rural and urban households in Solomon Islands through an expansion of the Solomon Islands Road Improvement Project (SIRIP). The package will finance the replacement or upgrading of about 30 water crossings, reconstruction of about 20 kilometers of roads as well as selective road relocations for climate change adaptation across three provinces.

The floods, which devastated parts of the northwest area of Guadalcanal in Solomon Islands in early 2009, have made life much harder for rural people in the affected areas. The rehabilitation of roads and bridges is therefore essential for re-connecting communities to markets and social services and sustaining economic activities in the area."

"Rising inflation is posing a threat to South Asia, with the situation most worrying in the Maldives where a foreign currency black market has emerged. In the third quarter of 2009, inflation in South Asia hit an average 10.9 percent. Pakistan is set to have the highest rate at 20.7 percent, followed by Nepal at 13.2 percent and Bangladesh at 5.2 percent this year.

In India, widening budget deficits are the most visible obstacle to stable and sustainable growth. New Delhi has forecast that inflation could hit 6.5 percent by the end of the financial year to March 2010 amid speculation the central bank could be forced to raise benchmark borrowing rates early in the new year in an attempt to check rising prices."

"Indonesia is expecting to begin constructing the Selat Sunda Bridge connecting Java and Sumatra islands by the end of 2014 at the latest. The government is now finishing the pre-feasibility study and forming a national team consisting of representatives of all related institutions.

The bridge would be the longest bridge in the country, outdoing the current one, which is the Suramadu Bridge connecting Java and Madura. The government had considered building a tunnel instead of bridge, but most difficult challenge was the 150-meter-deep pool located between the islands."

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