KUALA LUMPUR (March 15): The Asean Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) has announced the rolling out of its new five-year action plan (2021-2025) which aims to foster growth and recovery with sustainability.
Two other strategic objectives of the plan are promoting and sustaining inclusiveness, and strengthening and maintaining orderliness and resilience.
ACMF, a grouping of capital market regulators from all 10 Asean jurisdictions, said in a statement today that the plan was endorsed during its 34th Chairs Meeting that was hosted virtually by Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam.
To support the strategic objectives, ACMF stressed five key priorities, namely driving higher levels of transparency and disclosure, continuing with regulatory harmonisation, intensifying capacity building, amplifying communication and awareness building, and strengthening cooperation and coordination.
ACMF said the action plan was developed with feedback from capital market participants and other stakeholders to ensure it is inclusive and relevant, particularly amid the new normal.
The plan, it said, will be presented to the Asean finance ministers at the their meeting at the end of March for endorsement, adding that ACMF had discussed the progress of the six short- to medium-term focus areas that were identified in the Roadmap for Asean Sustainable Capital Markets.
In addition, ACMF continued to emphasize on the importance of capacity building, in order to complement the development efforts in sustainable finance.
“The ACMF welcomed the collaboration with the Asian Development Bank through its technical assistance, including the plan to introduce an online training programme for ASEAN capital market regulators within the year.”
“These initiatives and efforts reflect ACMF’s commitment to foster sustainable development in the ASEAN region to mitigate risks associated with climate change,” said ACMF.
ACMF also welcomes the continued collaboration with the Asean Working Committee – Capital Market Development (WC-CMD) on the transition standards, sustainability-linked bond standards and sustainability disclosures, as well as the progress on the Asean Sustainable Finance Taxonomy.
This is on top of the continued traction of ACMF’s sustainable finance initiatives that was earlier launched, namely the ASEAN Green Bond Standards, Asean Social Bond Standards and Asean Sustainability Bond Standards.
A total of US$8.35 billion bonds labelled under these Asean standards have been issued since 2017 until end-2020, said ACMF.
The meeting will also endorse the 2021 Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard Assessment Implementation Plan, with domestic assessment by Domestic Ranking Bodies, targeted to commence in the early third quarter of this year, said ACMF.