Designing Strategies and Policies for Managing Structural Change in Asia

Abstract

The core of the development process consists of the structural transformation of economies from rural to urban, from agriculture to industry to services, from production for household consumption to production for markets and from largely domestic trade to a higher ratio of foreign trade. The development process is influenced on the one hand by objectives and constraints and on the other by strategies and policies. This paper deals with the subject of designing strategies and policies for ntanaging structural change in Asia. A historical perspective of strategies and policies pursued by the Asian developing countries (ADCs) since the 1950s provides the backdrop against which issues related to their structural transformation in the 1990s are examined. This examination is conducted in the framework of the international and national environment that will be relevant for the ADCs. Export prospects, foreign capital inflows and transfer of technology are highlighted as the important external factors having a bearing on the development process of the ADCs. The opportunities offered by these factors require flexible responses. Growing flexibility becomes both a condition for and an objective of the structural transformation process.