The Prospects of Creating an Optimum Currency Area among Asean Countries

The article assesses the prospects of creating an optimum currency area (OCA) among ASEAN countries. To ensure sustainability of the creating currency zone, the potential candidate countries should meet the criteria of the OCA theory. At the same time, the present technique of assessing candidate countries implies that they must meet the OCA criteria relative to the «anchor» country. This approach creates the problem of the sensitivity of calculation results to the choice of the anchor country. Thus, the case of the OCA composition with Indonesia as the anchor country is different from the one with Singapore as the anchor country. Author’s modification of the specified technique allows bypassing the mentioned problem. Applying the modified approach to the ASEAN member countries allows concluding that the creation of an optimum currency area in South-East Asia is economically feasible for Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand. The rest of the ASEAN member countries (Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar) have not yet reached a high degree of macroeconomic convergence with partners of the integration bloc and even among themselves. Therefore there is a need for a transition period, during which the economies of these three countries can «catch up» the level of the more developed ASEAN member countries.