KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — Asean Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) has rolled out the ACMF Vision 2025, a five-year action plan from 2021 to 2025, and welcomes the progress on the Asean Sustainable Finance Taxonomy.
The action plan had been endorsed during the 34th ACMF Chairs’ Meeting hosted virtually by the Monetary Authority of Brunei Darussalam.
In a statement yesterday, ACMF said in realising the ACMF Vision 2025, the action plan sets out three strategic objectives: fostering growth and recovery with sustainability, promoting and sustaining inclusiveness, and strengthening and maintaining orderliness and resilience.
Meanwhile, it said the five key priorities that support the strategic objectives are driving higher levels of transparency and disclosure, continuing with regulatory harmonisation, intensifying capacity building, amplifying communication and awareness building, and strengthening cooperation and coordination.
It noted that the action plan builds on ACMF’s action plan 2016 to 2020, and was developed with feedback from capital market participants and other stakeholders to ensure that it is inclusive and relevant, particularly amid the new normal.
The ACMF Vision 2025 will be presented to the Asean Finance Ministers Meeting at the end of this month for endorsement.
The ACMF also commended the coordinated efforts made so far with other Asean government bodies, banking regulators and insurance regulators under the Working Committee on Capital Market Development, Senior Level Committee on Asean Financial Integration, and Asean Insurance Regulators’ Meeting on the Asean Sustainable Finance Taxonomy initiative.
During the ACMF Chairs’ Meeting, the group also noted continuing traction of ACMF’s sustainable finance initiatives launched earlier, such as the Asean Green Bond Standards, Asean Social Bond Standards, and Asean Sustainability Bond Standards.
From 2017 until the end of 2020, a total of US$8.35 billion (RM34.34 bilion) bonds labelled under these Asean standards have been issued.
It said as part of the initiatives to promote and strengthen the appeal of Asean asset classes and widen cross-border offering of Asean Collective Investment Schemes (Asean CIS), the group was pleased with the progress of the Philippines’ admission into the Asean CIS framework.
It added that the group also endorsed the 2021 Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard Assessment Implementation Plan during the meeting, with domestic assessment by domestic ranking bodies targeted to commence in the third quarter of 2021.
The ACMF is a high-level group of capital market regulators from all 10 Asean jurisdictions, namely, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
— Bernama
