Singapore 2006 will showcase ASEAN

Singapore, 6 April 2005: ASEAN economies will feature prominently at next year's IMF and World Bank Group Board of Governors Annual Meetings in Singapore, said Mr Raymond Lim, Singapore's Second Minister for Finance. Speaking at the Ninth ASEAN Finance Ministers Meeting in Vientiane, Lao PDR, Mr Lim said that plans were well under way to develop a series of programmes to profile the region to the world, leading up to and during the Singapore 2006 event.

"Singapore 2006 represents a unique opportunity to showcase ASEAN's economic developments, and business and investment opportunities. The event is an important occasion to demonstrate how ASEAN has bounced back from the Asian financial crisis, and how ASEAN countries are resolved to working together to accelerate growth in the region," said Mr Lim.

"Singapore 2006 will focus not only on ASEAN's economies, but also its diverse arts, rich cultures and unique tourist destinations," added Mr Lim. Singapore 2006 aims to attract a wide group of 16,000 top finance and central bank officials, business leaders from around the world, and even arts enthusiasts over 10 days next September. The Annual Meetings was last held in ASEAN in Bangkok in 1991.

Mr Lim also noted that the ASEAN Finance Process had taken on meaningful regional finance cooperation. The Linkages Task Force was studying ways to forge an interlinked securities marketplace within ASEAN that would facilitate easier cross border access for regional and international investors. A separate ASEAN 100 Task Force was developing various ASEAN equity indices that would help generate greater awareness on equity investment opportunities in South East Asia.

"Regional integration is a matter of necessity, not choice," said Mr Lim. ''A more integrated ASEAN would result in far greater synergies that would allow ASEAN economies to leverage on one another and achieve much more than

Mr Lim said he was also happy to note that the newly-created ASEAN Capital Markets Forum, which brings together regional securities regulators, had made progress in identifying key areas of securities regulation where greater harmonisation could be ach

Ministry of Finance