All right, I'll try a second time: Question on Asia and Y2K
Back in March, you will recall, the Senate's Special Committee on the Y2K Technology Problem held hearings on international Y2K preparedness, and subsequently issued a report.
senate.gov
As you also no doubt recall, Asian countries, on the whole, were among the most unprepared. But, as the Committee concluded, the real problem lay in determining just how unprepared. Governments and individual companies were unwilling to reveal much information, for fear of scaring away such foreign investors as had been lured back. And the private consulting firms providing the Senate with estimates had their reasons for not divulging their sources.
Not surprisingly, different consultants ranked different countries differently. This was notably true of Japan. While one report gave Japan relatively high marks, the Gartner Group placed it in "Tier #3." (Tier #1: 15% of companies in country will experience at least one mission-critical failure. No Asian countries in this category. Tier #2: 33% Only South Korea,Singapore, Taiwan in this category. Tier #3 - 50%. Tier #4: 60%.) The following month, it should be added, the Gartner Group "promoted" Japan to Tier #2.
At the same time, the Gartner Group assured the Senate Committee that even though "disruptions" were inevitable, "only 10% of failures are expected to last more than 3 days." So the question, in the Committee's mind, was "which areas will face disruptions longer than 3 days, and how severe will the impact of these failures be." The Committee then concluded: "This is the overall question that the Committee hopes to address in the following months."
northkohala.com
Well, if the Committee has been "addressing the question," it sure has not been doing so publicly, at least not where Asia is concerned. And I personally have been searching for material in which someone else addresses the question in any depth and/or detail, and all I have been able to turn up so far is this May 11 New York Times piece on China:
nytimes.com
SO -- is anyone out there better informed about the situation, either in general (Asia as a whole) or in particular (country or region)? If so, what impact is your assessment of Y2K preparedness having on your investment strategy in Asia (assuming you are invested there)? In short, just how serious do you think the danger of major disruption is, and what, if any, effect do you expect it to have on the region's economy in general and on foreign investment in particular?
jbe |
