ASEAN Capital Markets Become More Compact, 10 Countries Agree to Deepen More Liquid Instruments

JAKARTA – The ASEAN Capital Market Forum (ACMF) has just finished holding The 37th ACMF Chairs Meeting and ACMF's 2022 International Conference last week in Cambodia.

The Financial Services Authority (OJK) as the official representative of Indonesia stated that ACMF is an ideal platform to realize sustainable finance in the region.

Chief Executive of OJK Capital Market Supervision Inarno Djajadi said OJK is honored to continue the ACMF leadership relay in 2023 in line with Indonesia's chairmanship in ASEAN.

"OJK is fully committed and actively participates in ensuring that the goals of the ACMF sustainable finance agenda remain on track, continue to progress, and also achieve the expected targets", he said in a press statement today, Tuesday, November 1.

Inarno explained that ACMF is a capital market forum consisting of 10 ASEAN countries, namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

"ACMF's main responsibility is to develop a deeper, more liquid, and integrated regional capital market with a focus on harmonization of the regulatory framework to achieve better capital market integration in ASEAN", he stressed.

The former boss of the Indonesia Stock Exchange also explained that the strong commitment of Southeast Asian countries at the ASEAN Capital Market Forum to encourage sustainable finance had been carried out through several results, such as the launch of the ASEAN Green Bond Standards in 2017, the ASEAN Social Bond Standards in 2018.

Then, the ASEAN Sustainability Bond Standards in the 2018 Roadmap for ASEAN Sustainable Capital Markets 2020 and the ASEAN SDG Bond Toolkit in 2021.

Meanwhile, the ACMF agenda related to sustainable finance is also stated in the ACMF Action Plan 2021-2025 which aims to encourage growth and recovery with sustainability.

"At the 2022 ACMF International Conference, new standards have been launched to support the development of the ASEAN sustainable capital market, namely the ASEAN Sustainability-Linked Bonds Standards and the ASEAN Sustainable and Responsible Fund Standards", concluded Inarno.