Yokohama—The Philippines has thanked host Japan and the other ASEAN+3 countries (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, China and South Korea) for their active participation in the highly productive two-day meeting here whose output would help the region weather the current global challenges of “policy uncertainties, increased protectionism and sharper than expected financial tightening.”
“Our time spent here has been worthwhile as we have further advanced our financial cooperation initiatives between ASEAN, China, Japan, and Korea,” said Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III in a statement during Friday afternoon’s joint press conference at the end of the two-day event held at the Royal Park Hotel.
The ASEAN + 3 convened its 20th meeting here under the co-chairmanship of Dominguez and Japan Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso.
Dominguez said that through the meeting, the participating countries have strengthened the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) as a regional safety net, finalized ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office’s (AMRO) Strategic Direction and Medium-term Implementation Plan (SD&MTIP) that is meant to boost the region’s macroeconomic and financial stability, and drew up the Yokohama Vision that set out goals for the ASEAN+3 bloc’s greater resiliency and financial integration.
He said the participating countries have made further progress in their joint efforts to expand the guarantee capacity of the Credit Guarantee and Investment Facility (CGIF) and advance financial cooperation for Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance.
According to Dominguez, they noted in the meeting that by developing local currency bond markets, the member-countries could tap the “large pool” of savings in the region and help finance its infrastructure requirements.
Dominguez and other Philippine officials were in Yokohama to attend the 50th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors and other related meetings.
The finance secretary assumed the chairmanship of the ADB Board of Governors ahead of this financial institution’s 51st Annual Meeting in 2018 that will be held in the Philippines.
Dominguez said at the press conference that, “the Philippines, as Co-chair of the ASEAN+3 wishes to thank our Co-chair Japan and our ASEAN+3 Colleagues for a productive meeting that brought out further progress in financial cooperation in the region. We are confident that our efforts and outputs in this meeting will help the region in weathering the current global challenges of policy uncertainties, increased protectionism and sharper than expected financial tightening.”
The main outputs from the meeting include, he said, ‘The strengthening of the CMIM as an essential regional safety-net. This strengthening comes in two ways: through the revision of the CMIM Operational Guidelines and our collective efforts in working towards increasing the IMF De-linked portion from 30 percent to 40 percent.”
“Our meeting also finalized AMRO’s Strategic Direction and Medium-term Implementation Plan, which will boost AMRO’s capacity and help it to contribute to the region’s macroeconomic and financial stability through high quality surveillance to member economies, and provision of strong support for the CMIM,” he said.
“We also encouraged AMRO in enhancing cooperation with other global and regional financial institutions to further increase its institutional capacity. In addition,” he said. “I would like to thank China, Japan and Korea for its contributions in the establishment of the trust funds in AMRO which will support the implementation of AMRO’s technical assistance program.”
Dominguez said, “Our meeting also looked into expanding the guarantee capacity of the Credit Guarantee and Investment Facility to support the development of local currency bond markets.”
“We note that the development of local currency bond markets can help mobilize the large pool of savings in the region, and in financing the region’s infrastructure requirements,” he said.
He said, “Our meeting also took note of the developments in our cooperation in Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance and has also developed the Yokohama Vision which sets out our goals for a more resilient and financially integrated ASEAN+3.”
“This list of outcomes quite shows that it has been a busy past couple of days for us here in Yokohama. Our time spent here has, however, been worthwhile as we have further advanced our financial cooperation initiatives between ASEAN, China, Japan, and Korea,” he said.
“In closing, I wish to thank Japan for working closely and efficiently with the Philippines in our Co-chairmanship, and we look forward to seeing everyone again as we host our next Meeting in 2018,” he added.
