Chapter five: Corporate governance and external earnings of their workers for their domestic economic development.16 It was indeed a traumatic experience for the Country Review Mission (CRM) to find evidence of the economic crisis in the isolated and small village of Thaba-Tseka high up in the mountains of Lesotho. The local community complained about the recent addition to their unemployment woes by retrenched workers returning from Lesotho textile industries, mines and South Africa. 485. Against this background, the government of Lesotho has little option but to give urgent and serious attention to improving the quality of corporate governance in Lesotho. Major revisions are bound to be introduced to corporate governance in the industrial countries in the near future and it will be prudent for Lesotho to move with these developments. In the global economic environment, corporate governance has now been elevated to a higher level. It is no longer just a voluntary private sector practice. It has become a major national, regional and international policy objective. 486. In seeking to improve corporate governance, Lesotho and other countries in the Southern Africa region could all benefit from cooperative and joint programmes to: improve banking and other financial regulation and supervision; develop national and regional corporate governance codes; fight corruption and money laundering; develop an integrated clearing system for domestic and cross-border banking transactions; and remove remaining foreign exchange controls between member countries and the rest of the world. 487. Lesotho’s participation in regional integration and international trade is also relevant in terms of promoting private sector growth. These factors have the potential to: create larger markets and opportunities for small businesses to serve specialised customers; broaden the sources of supply; and lower the cost of raw materials. These matters become more than urgent in the context of the current global economic crisis. They should be taken into account in ongoing discussions to revise the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and Southern African Customs Union (SACU) agreements. 488. The CRM assessed corporate governance in Lesotho using several relevant international standards and codes and objectives identified as priority areas for corporate governance reform by African heads of state and government. Codes and standards 16 • Principles of Corporate Governance [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Commonwealth]. • International Standards of Accounting and Reporting. • International Standards on Auditing. • Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision. • Core Principles for Securities and Insurance Supervision and Regulations. • African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. • Labour codes of the International Labour Organization (ILO). IMF (2009). Implications of the Global Financial Crisis for Low Income Countries, www.imf.org. 135