Former central bank head: protecting supply chains key to economic recovery

Keeping international supply chains unimpeded and resilient to make ways for innovative and unconventional economic policies will be key to ensuring a steady global economic recovery, said a former head of China's central bank.

Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China, made the remarks when addressing the International Finance Forum (IFF)'s annual meeting that opened in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Saturday morning.

He said it is important to keep global supply chains smooth, unimpeded and resilient, so that unconventional economic stimulus can be brought out to ensure steady global economic recovery. He added that doing so is a key challenge commonly faced around the world, especially for policy makers of key economies.

He noted that bridging the global vaccine gap and making the COVID-19 vaccine a globally accessible is the most pressing challenge faced by all countries.

Zhou also believes there are still quite a number of issues to be tackled for global recovery. Global synergy is needed in tackling risks brought by climate change and in providing timely finance and technical support to the large number of developing countries. Innovation is required to expedite digitization and protect data security and privacy during the process.

"We also need to ensure that financial services will center around growing the real economy," he said, "ESG investment should be intensified to defuse systemic financial risk."