ASEAN Finance and Central Bank Deputies Meeting

The ASEAN Finance and Central Bank Deputies Meeting (AFDM) was chaired by Mr. Tran Xuan Ha, Vice-Minister of Finance of Vietnam in the city of Nha Trang of Khanh Hoa Province on April 5. The AFDM was attended by the ASEAN member Finance and Central Bank Deputies, the ASEAN Deputy General Secretary and regional financial and banking officials. The AFDM focused on the contents of the ASEAN financial cooperation to be reported to the 14th ASEAN Finance Ministers’ Meeting held on April 7-8.

 

The participants discussed the contents related to the ASEAN financial and monetary integration roadmap through the committees for capital market development, liberalization of financial services and capital account and ASEAN financial cooperation initiatives, namely insurance and custom cooperation. For the financial and monetary integration roadmap, the meeting acknowledged the progress in implementing initiatives and action plans of the committees in order to achieve the objectives set out in the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community Plan.

 

The participants agreed to report to the ASEAN Finance Ministers Meeting recommendations of working groups, including the formulation of the set of the ASEAN capital market indicators to assess development, the openness and liquidity of the market, capacity building undertakings, investment promotion program….

 

In regard to the ASEAN cooperation initiatives with partner countries, namely the Republic of Korea, Japan and China (ASEAN + 3), the meeting reached agreement with the ASEAN views on initiatives of the Asian bond market development and the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM).

 

Additionally, several other contents were discussed at the meeting including the ASEAN infrastructure donor initiative, especially cooperation with the World Bank (WB) on establishment of an infrastructure donor network and the proposal of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for establishing the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund to mobilize savings for investment in regional infrastructure projects. This initiative would be remarkable in the process of ASEAN financial cooperation in the coming time. The participants also exchanged their views on the ASEAN economic supervision report in general and challenges faced by each member country in the context of the post global financial crisis.

 

The meeting concluded successfully and agreed that the ASEAN 2011 Finance and Central Bank Deputies Meeting will be held in Brunei Darussalam.