"We have a responsibility that we should speak up, that we should say what we think should be done. We cannot sit quietly in a corner," Helmut Maucher told Reuters.

"To speak up in the open market place and express our views and talk to governments is more necessary than in the past," he said on the sidelines of the East Asia Economic Summit, organised by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.

"I would say that responsibility is not growing, but that it should finally be exercised. A lot of business people have done their business and thought the rest is not their problem," added Maucher.

For some corporations, this would mean shifting the emphasis of their government lobbying from self-interest to collective interests.

"When I speak out, it shouldn't be only for my business, how I sellmore Nescafe. This is wrong, but to think from an overall point of view what is necessary in order to improve business and improve prosperity," he said.

"I would like to see the responsible attitude exercised more by my peers," said Maucher, who is also president of the International Chamber of Commerce.

But while the role of the world's biggest corporations in global economic governance was expanding, they were not on the verge of developing extra-governmental powers.

"I'm very cautious about saying that multinationals govern the world. This is ridiculous. We need the frameworks, we are not politicians.

Maucher, co-chairman of the summit that brings together policy makers and global business leaders, was confident that the three-day Singapore conference would make a contribution to solving Asian and global economic woes.

"This whole crisis will lead to somewhat more cooperation between responsible business people and governments," he said.

"With a debate or a conference you will never solve everyproblem, but everybody involved is listening and learning something. I am sure they (policy makers) are being influenced by the debate," he said.

A key lesson was the need for adherance to basic rules of governance in Asia and not necessarily a complete overhaul of the world's economic framework that some have called for as a response to the globalisation of the economy.

"The crisis has nothing to do with changing fundamentals. We just have to go back to fundamentals and confirm and exercise and apply them," Maucher said.

"We have to get rid of this pessimism and this wrong reasoning that globalisation is evil. That is not true, but it has triggered certain problems easier and quicker, which is probably good for everybody."