Emerging economic regions such as Asia and Latin America need to build stronger ties with each other to make up for the lack of growth in the advanced economies, said Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Wednesday.

He was speaking at the 10th Latin Asia Business Forum held at Raffles City Convention Centre.

Mr Tharman, who is also Finance Minister, said the world economy is in a new structural setting, in which developed economies will face slow growth for some time.

Hence, emerging regions such as emerging Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa need to greatly strengthen links with each other to compensate for weak growth in the advanced economies, Mr Tharman said.