By Debbie Annells

As we enter the 21st century we wonder what it will hold. People work away industriously at their jobs and their businesses, and to what end?

There is no question that the standard of living of many people throughout the world has increased for the better, but there are still huge pockets of poverty.

As we work in our jobs and our businesses, we often overlook the reasons why. Usually workers and business owners are trying to increase their wealth levels, to sustain a better life for themselves, their families and their employees.

Levels of personal wealth are in fact increasing dramatically, and better communications allow wealth to be quantified and calculated. It is estimated, for example that total wealth in private hands, as administered by private banks exceeds US$25.5 trillion (a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter estimate). Of this it is also estimated that approximately only US$2.3 trillion is in Asia (a figure estimated by Gemini Consulting).

Although there are more people in Asia than anywhere else, and they save more, on average, if they get the chance, Asia traditionally has had the problem of illiquid markets. The U.S. stock markets have released wealth to many U.S. persons, thereby making the U.S. the envy of the modern world, although the fundamentals of their economy, and the values on which it is based may be more questionable.

However, it is the case that Alan Greenspan has always allowed liquidity in the markets in the U.S., and that tactic has been very successful so far.

U.S. markets are more liquid, owing primarily to their transparency, and the well regulated regimes that they have for lending, investing and so forth. This relies heavily on good legal and banking systems and capital raising markets. This must surely be a signal to Asia to improve its banking and capital raising regimes, for the benefit of all society.

It is no coincidence, for example that Hong Kong and Singapore, with their well regulated banking regimes (rated as in the first tier of banking regimes around the world along with Switzerland, Luxembourg and most G7 nations, but not Japan, in a recent OECD Financial Action Task Force study, which was reviewing reasons for the Asian financial crisis in 1997) have been much in the forefront of Asian cities. Banking and capital raising infrastructures, which in turn rely on suitable legal regimes supporting them, must therefore be at the forefront of any strategy to improve any economy.

We now see Japan, and Thailand and India as well as China leading the charge on improving banking practice in their own countries, which will improve the general wealth levels of their citizens and make the rest of the world watch out. In particular privately held assets and businesses in all these countries, if they can become listed, and become more liquid, will surely make Asians even more wealthy, which is presumably an aspect the Chinese authorities have considered in relaxing their listing requirements recently.

The Internet and its applications in creating more liquid markets will be of great assistance to Asia, in this writer's view, and education in this sector is a must for all Asian economies. The new Indian approach to generating 300,000 top quality IT professionals annually through its Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) qualification is a breathtaking attempt at possible world domination in a short space of time!

A world takeover without a war. The fact that the Indian IT Ministry did not wait for the Indian Education Ministry to initiate this change in focus on education but implemented it by itself, is deserving of many congratulations for speed. Such speed is a strategy that other countries may follow, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where education is even more highly sought after and rated than in the developed West.

The Philippines is also notable for its IT training, and often based on its good English language training. In the software world English language skills are crucial as it is considered the most flexible programming language, capable of being very precise, or very vague, and working at several levels at the same time. So English language skills are an important factor in IT skills at present, and training in this area may need to come first.

Perhaps more interestingly, for manufacturers at last, the e-commerce revolution makes many suppliers more powerful than buyers. This paradigm shift in market forces means that more profits may become captured by suppliers of products which cannot easily be manufactured by competitors and they can be sold to the highest bidder, often through the Internet.

More wealth may end up staying with suppliers than has traditionally been the case, which must be a good thing for manufacturers in the Asia-Pacific region, who have traditionally supplied Western and European markets at low prices, leaving profits in the West and in Europe.

Changes in the Asia-Pacific markets are apparent, including changes lead by e-commerce, and infrastructures based on e-commerce, which rely on knowledge workers, and hence education. At the same time governments are liberalising many systems, to increase capital markets and hence investment in their own economies. No one believes a crisis like the 1997 financial crisis will be allowed to happen again ?but there will always be crises despite governments best efforts to run well regulated and shock-free systems.