SINGAPORE Asia needs to air its corporate dirty linen in public, even if that means losing face, if it wants to clean up the standard of its business practices, according to prominent Asia watcher Michael Backman.

Backman, the author of several books on the region including "Asian Eclipse: Exposing the Dark Side of Business in Asia", published in 1999, said although the quality of corporate governance in Asia has improved since the 1997-1998 financial crisis there is room for improvement.

And solutions should be sought from the United States the land of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, he said.

"Because of WorldCom and Enron, the US is even better," said Backman, in Singapore to promote the book "Big In Asia" which he co-authored.

With the exception of Indonesia and to a lesser extent Thailand, Asia has made significant efforts to introduce more transparency into the corporate sector and lift the standard of business practices, he told AFP .

"It depends on each country but generally I am encouraged," he said.

"Before the (1997-1998) economic crisis, very few countries in the region even understood what corporate governance was," he said.

Better place

Backman cited Singapore's move towards releasing corporate earnings on a quarterly basis and the restructuring of some of Malaysia's biggest business conglomerates, as examples of some of the improvements.

But while "there is no doubt" Asia is now a better place in which to invest than it was five years ago, there remains plenty to be done and the US corporate model is where Asia should look despite its corporate scandals, he said.

"The beauty of Enron is that we all know about it and there has been a fair amount of transparency and the screw up that it was," he said.

"In a way it does (show the transparency)" of the US corporate sector.

"When you see what they did with Enron... senate inquiry, regulators looking at how they can improve... in the United States, there is a real culture of celebrating dirty linen."

But, a willingness to expose fraud was seriously lacking in Asia, he said.

"Here in Asia, we tend to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it didn't happen because we don't want people to lose face.

"They should accept criticism, and the culture of criticism, because criticism is actually something that is very healthy.

"Here, there is a tendency to cover up problems as a substitute for fixing up problems... but of course it varies around the region."

Of the three Asian economies which sought multi-billion dollar bailouts from the International Monetary Fund during the crisis in the late 90s Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia Backman listed Jakarta as the biggest disappointment.

Gone backwards

"It's hard to think of any other country with a reputation as bad as Indonesia now globally apart from Nigeria and other places like that," he said.

"I think they've gone backwards," he said. "Corruption anecdotally has probably got worse".

In Thailand, efforts to improve corporate practice appeared to have been "bogged down by politics and special vested interest," said Backman.

He described Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as the "Silvio Berlusconi of Southeast Asia", refering to another prime minister who is also his country's richest citizen.

"When you look at the Thai cabinet, sometimes it just looks like a meeting of the Thai chamber of commerce," he said.

Although Bangkok has made improvements in bankruptcy procedures, "you do have a problem with vested interest, where people aren't putting the nation first."

Backman gives South Korea the highest marks as far as making improvements is concerned.

"South Korea has probably been the star performer from the Asia economic crisis," he said, awarding Seoul a 65-70 out of a possible 100, while scoring Bangkok at 48 and Jakarta a "negative". AFP