The current account surplus may have been indicative of “imbalances”, but does not provide sufficiently granular information to make an effective assessment. The emergence of unsustainable imbalances seems to be better and more clearly captured through other indicators such as large jumps in asset prices and the rapid expansion in corporate sector debt (Charts 4 and 5).
It would be apparent from your deliberations today that Asia’s financial markets are continuing to develop rapidly. To take the market for fixed interest securities, the total size of the bond market in Asia, excluding the very large Japanese market (which has been highly developed for a long time), now amounts to about $ trillion, having increased substantially over the past five years.