Reddy appointed to UN panel on financial crisis

UNITED NATIONS: Former RBI Governor Y V Reddy is among members of a high-level panel of economists appointed by UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto to suggest measures to deal with the current economic crisis, including possible reform of global financial institutions.

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and is a former chief economist of the World Bank, will chair the panel which will suggest steps that member states can take to secure a more stable global economic order.

Reddy and other members of the panel are also expected to suggest possible reform of the international financial institutions. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the current Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia, who is a former Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, were also named to the panel.

Other members include Zeti Akhtar Aziz, the Governor of Malaysia's Central Bank, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Professor of Economics at Institute d'Etudes Politiques de Paris in France, Avinash Persaud of Barbados, who is Chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited, Japan's Eisuke Sakakibara, Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank and China's Yu Yongding, Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics.

When D'Escoto announced the formation of the panel last month, he noted that "there is growing recognition that the current turmoil in the financial system cannot be solved through piecemeal responses at the national and regional levels but requires a coordinated effort at the global level" which only the United Nations can provide.