1. Who We Are
  2. News
Events
East Asia and Pacific in Focus
October 11, 2013MC 13-121, Washington DC

A panel discussion on the development opportunities and challenges facing the East Asia and Pacific Region.

Panelists:

H.E. Muhammad Chatib Basri, Minister of Finance, Indonesia

Willem Buiter, Citigroup

Eswar Prasad, Cornell University and Brookings Institution

Axel van Trotsenburg, World Bank Regional Vice President, EAP

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, World Bank Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director

Moderated by: Martin Wolf, Financial Times

  • Image

    Muhamad Chatib Basri

    Muhamad Chatib Basri is the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia. He previously served as the Chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board of the Republic of Indonesia. Dr. Basri teaches at the Department of Economics, University of Indonesia. He co-founded CReco Research Institute, a Jakarta-based economic consulting firm, in 2010. Dr. Basri served as a Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia during 2006–2010, and as Sherpa to the President of the Republic of Indonesia for the G–20 meeting in Washington, November 2008. He also acted as a Deputy Minister of Finance for the G–20 from 2006–2009. From 2005–2012 he served as a member of the Advisory Team to the Indonesian National Team on Trade Negotiation.He has been a consultant for the World Bank, the ADB, USAID, AUSAID, OECD and UNCTAD. He is the author of a number of papers in international journals and actively writes for various leading newspapers and magazines in Indonesia.
  • Image

    Willem Buiter

    Willem Buiter is Global Chief Economist of Citigroup. Prior to this, he was professor of European Political Economy at the European Institute of LSE. He was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (1997–2000), and Chief Economist and Special Adviser to the President at the EBRD (2000–2005).He has also held academic appointments at Princeton University, the University of Bristol, Yale University and the University of Cambridge, and has been a consultant and advisor to the IMF, World Bank, IADB, EBRD, and a number of national governments and agencies. He has published widelyon subjects such as open economy macroeconomics, monetary and exchange rate theory, fiscal policy, social security, economic development and transition economies. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Yale in 1975. He is a CEPR Research Fellow.
  • Image

    Eswar Prasad

    Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the IMF’s Research Department, and of the IMF’s China Division. He has also served as the co-editor of the journal IMF Staff Papers and was the founding editor of the quarterly IMF Research Bulletin. His latest book,Emerging Markets: Resilience and Growth Amid Global Turmoil, was published in December 2010. His research has been cited extensively in TheEconomist, Financial Times, Forbes, International Herald Tribune, andNew York Times, andhe has made frequent appearances on BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Fox, NBC, NPR, Reuters and other radio and television channels. Prasad has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and his research on China has been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record.
  • Image

    Axel van Trotsenburg

    Axel van Trotsenburg is the Regional Vice President of the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank. He oversees a portfolio of over US$30 billion in loans, grants, credits and trust funds. Supervising over 1,000 staff, he leads the World Bank’s strategy in the region which supports countries by addressing four shared challenges: natural disasters; poverty and equality; infrastructure and urbanization; and making governments work for people. Mr. van Trotsenburg previously served as the World Bank’s Vice-President for Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships, where he led the 16th replenishment of the International Development Association, the Bank’s fund for the poorest countries. Mr. van Trotsenburg holds Masters and Doctorate degrees in economics, and a Masters degree in International Affairs.
  • Image

    Sri Mulyani Indrawati

    Sri Mulyani Indrawati is Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director at World Bank She is responsible for the institution’s operations in all regions and networks covering the thematic areas of human development; sustainable development; poverty reduction and economic management; and financial and private sector development. Ms. Indrawati joined the World Bank in June 2010. Previously she served as Indonesia’s minister of finance in addition to being the coordinating minister of economic affairs. She is credited with helping to steer Indonesia through the challenging but successful transition from autocracy to democracy. Ms. Indrawati holds a Ph.D. in economics. She has received numerous honors and awards, including Euromoney Magazine’s Global Finance Minister of the Year, and Emerging Markets Best Finance Minister in Asia. She has also been regularly on Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world.
  • Image

    Martin Wolf

    Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. Mr. Wolf is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College and of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy, and an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1999, and a member of its International Media Council since 2006. He holds honorary Doctorates from Nottingham University and the London School of Economics. He was a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking in 2010–2011. Mr. Wolf’s most recent publications are Why Globalization Works and Fixing Global Finance.
RELATED
Welcome