ANALYSIS:FIVE CITIES. Eight days. Thousands of air miles. Countless meetings.

That was the lot of Central Bank governor Prof Patrick Honohan in Asia over the past week. The tour started in the Malaysian capital, hopped to Singapore and then hauled north to Hong Kong and Beijing. It ended in Tokyo yesterday.

It was instigated by the governor himself with the intention of telling Asians that the Irish economy had hit bottom and things were now on the up. He was also interested in learning the lessons of their banking crises in the late 1990s.

Good. Proactivity among public officials is not common in this country. Prof Honohan’s getting out and about in rising Asia can only be of benefit to Ireland. He addressed chambers of commerce to create trade and investment opportunities. He visited financial regulators and universities to pick up tips on rebuilding broken banking systems.

And he met financial institutions and sovereign wealth funds (state-owned investment vehicles). Both are potential bank rollers of the Government. Sources of finance other than the capricious bond market would be no bad thing when it comes to raising the tens of billions of euro the Government will have borrow in the years ahead before the budget is returned to balance.

The trip’s organisation was also interesting. Many of Prof Honohan’s meetings were set up by an organisation called the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. One of its two founders is an Irishman, Michael Lafferty. His black book of contacts is a tome and contains names of movers and shakers from all over the planet. His forum opened doors for Prof Honohan in the private sector beyond those which protocol dictates must open in local central banks and finance ministries.

The trip was further evidence for the case to be made that Prof Honohan’s appointment to lead the Central Bank was one of the best things the Government has done.

The old way, of giving the governorship to the outgoing head of the Department of Finance as a retirement present, was absurd. Prof Honohan is just the sort of figure that most other countries appoint to run central banks – he is qualified, knowledgable, capable of flying the flag abroad and being respected there too (among other things, he is a former economist at the World Bank). It would be good if appointments such as his were to become the norm across the public sector.