Recognizing that the reason that investors have generally stayed away from bonds issued by Asian entities is due to their low liquidity and low credit ratings, APEC is currently active in the design of instruments that can be traded in these markets, through its work on securitization and credit enhancement. Given that at present, a number of bonds issued by Asian entities are below investment grade, the use of securitization and credit guarantees to enhance the quality of these issues can act as a near-term solution to giving these issues a credit quality acceptable to investment managers, and give them the needed initial exposure to private investors. The introduction of these new instruments – which would attain a credit quality acceptable to investment managers by achieving a high rating from international rating agencies – would also benefit the international financial community by providing investors with a greater diversity of products and instruments for investment. More importantly, it would enable smaller corporate entities – who would otherwise be limited to financing themselves through short-term commercial bank lending – to access bond markets and find a source of funding more suitable to their needs. Cross guarantees A means of helping economies with less developed local bond markets to issue debt in the regional market may be through the use of cross guarantees.
Aside from providing stable and long-term financing alternatives for businesses and public sector agencies in the region, this would also help strengthen the financial system in the region by making available a diverse choice of alternatives for investment, as well as support economic growth through more stable financial systems in the region. 2  BIS Review 24/2003  The necessity to develop a regional bond market While many countries in the region have begun the process of developing bond markets – or where they exist already, deepen and widen those markets – countries are also looking to promote the development of the regional bond markets in parallel with development of their own markets. Given the problems of economies of scale as mentioned earlier, development of the regional bond markets would offer a more efficient and viable option in neighboring countries until these countries’ financial systems are more developed and have a more sophisticated market structure in place. Roadmap for the development of Asian bond markets Over the past year, the development of Asian bond markets has been discussed in various international fora, such as ASEAN Finance Ministers Meeting, the Executives Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks (EMEAP), Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Development of the demand side, involves promoting the pooling of investor base or the pooling of reserves under the Asian Bond Fund initiative, which has had a good start under the cooperation of central banks.