Asia Asserts its Economic Supremacy.

The article reports on the assertion of supremacy by Asia in economic front. Saudi Arabia has overtaken last year's top three, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, while Egypt and Tunisia, buoyed by oil, have made the top 10. But there's still a strong Asian presence at the head of our rankings of economic performance since 1974. Nine years ago, nobody would have predicted that in 1982, seven LDCs would rank among the top 10 economic performers between 1974 and 1982. And after the second oil shock in 1978 it is doubtful if anybody's money would have been on any LDC to make it to the top flight, far less stay there. Yet that is what has happened. Saudi Arabia has come out as the top performer, up from fourth place last year. It has achieved consistently high rankings for each of the five indicators (see box opposite), with, as expected, a particularly strong performance on balance of payments. The only apparent weakness in the Saudi performance is in the control of inflation, a problem that is now being attended to, although the actual level of inflation was not high enough to weaken the exchange rate. INSET: Producing the Rankings..