O Banco Asiático de Desenvolvimento e a economia asiática

O BAD publicou recentemente (Setembro passado) o Update do seu exame anual à economia da Ásia-Pacífico. É un documento que vale sempre a pena consultar e por isso deixamos aqui o link para o texto onde ele realça os aspectos principais da evolução recente da economia asiática.
Pelo sim, pelo não, permitimo-nos deixar aqui a transcrição (em inglês...) de alguns parágrafos que podem ser mais importantes para Timor Leste. No InfoTimor há links para informações sobre Timor Leste

Sobre o petróleo e seu preço:
"While oil prices have come down from their peaks of $147 per barrel in July 2008, they will stay high in the long run. Inflationadjusted oil prices will remain well above $100 per barrel until about 2020, according to research commissioned by the Asian Development Bank.
The price runup in oil has been driven mostly by the fundamentals of demand and supply. Surging global demand and the inability of global supply to keep pace have relentlessly generated upward price pressures.

In the future, global oil prices will continue to be determined by fundamentals. Global demand growth will be increasingly driven by demand from developing Asia and the Middle East. The growing appetite for transportation fuel will be of particular importance. On the supply side, the near-term peaking of output from oil producers who are not members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and constraints on the expansion of OPEC’s output capacity in the medium term, will put severe strains on meeting incremental global oil demand."

Sobre o arroz e seu preço:
"The price of rice—the basic food staple for billions of Asians— has fallen from peak levels reached earlier this year yet remains more that twice as high as it was at the start of 2008. The surge in prices of rice and other staple foods reverses a decades-long decline in real prices.
The causes of this runup are complex, but have four fundamental drivers.
First, rapid economic growth in emerging economies, particularly the People’s Republic of China and India, has put upward pressure on prices of a range of commodities, including food. Demand has simply outpaced supply.
Second, a sustained decline in the dollar since 2004 has added to upward price pressure on dollar-denominated commodities—particularly on crude oil—and this has fueled a search for hedges against a weak dollar.
Third, the combination of high oil prices and legislative mandates to raise production of biofuel substitutes for gasoline and diesel fuel has established a price link between feedstocks, such as corn and vegetable oils, and fuel prices.
Fourth, to some degree at least, financial speculation arising from low interest rates has motivated commodity price changes."