Some firms have established their regional headquarters here. These companies have helped to broaden the range of products here beyond plain vanilla equity mutual fund products and develop more sophisticated skills and expertise. MAS has decided to place out an additional $ billion to external fund managers. The funds will be invested in Asian equity and fixed income markets. This recognises the investment opportunities in Asia and will also help to anchor and grow specialist skills in Asian investments in our financial centre. This will be on top of what GIC recently announced it will place out for external management. Liquidity and depth in Singapore’s treasury and capital markets is another critical success factor for our financial centre. Singapore can serve global issuers and investors as the gateway to ASEAN markets. We want to promote the ASEAN region as an asset class for capital markets investments. We will work with key players, including the Singapore Exchange (SGX), to forge regional exchange linkages, integrate market infrastructure, harmonise regulatory frameworks and promote regional electronic bond trading. SGX already has a link with the Australian Stock Exchange and is in discussions with Bursa Malaysia and the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The ASEAN Finance Ministers agreed at their meeting in April to explore alliances and linkages among ASEAN securities markets to facilitate access to these less mature markets by international investors. A Linkages Task Force, chaired by MAS, will make its recommendations next year.
The common objective of all these efforts is to identify possible measures for improving the safety, efficiency and integrity of the regional payment systems. 7.4 The most demanding factor, common to all, is the rapidly changing global payment system infrastructure that is challenging the existence of domestic and regional payment systems, which are lagging behind. Given the increasing sophistication of cross-border transactions, the need to mitigate risks involved in using outmoded infrastructure has to be given priority. The SAARC payment system development strategy should therefore be designed to cater not only to the region’s present needs, but also its future demands. 8. How does the SAARC Payments Initiative work? 8.1 Let me briefly set out the proposed institutional structure of the SAARC Payments Initiative. 8.2 By consensus, Hon. Governors of the SAARC central banks requested the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to take the lead in this effort. We are happy to be the catalyst and promoter, but hope that at an appropriate time, this Initiative will be driven by the other SAARC member central banks. In consultation with the SAARC Governors, we have already appointed a SAARC Payments Council (SPC), which is composed of the chairpersons of the National Payments Councils (NPCs) in each of the SAARC member countries or by senior officials appointed by the Governors of central banks in countries which do not have NPCs.