Forging university and regional professional networks will surely be supportive of this endeavor. Visa, work permits, and regulatory requirements on foreign employment are all important issues that need to be quickly addressed to ensure that the investment environment is competitive. Over the longer term, I also see it as very crucial that we address obstacles to integration at the root cause, which is the weak integration mindset. This integration mindset means that we need to assess the benefits and costs of integration more deeply and strategize how they fit with the overall economic development plans of individual ASEAN member countries. There are dangers in allowing such an important assessment to remain vague. My concern is that many key stakeholders of ASEAN integration still view the AEC with cynicism; that life will go on, with few changes to the status quo. And this complacency is very dangerous because we may wake up and find that we are already too late to catch the rising wave of ASEAN. Distinguished Participants, The second part of this three-pronged strategy deals with human capital development to meet global competencies. My personal opinion as a CEO in the financial industry is that we need people or our human resources in the next decade to be assertive, flexible, analytical and quantitative, technology competent, as well as having strong leadership, people skills, foreign language proficiency, and cultural awareness.
This is a question that in itself does not concern the choice of whether or not we should have electronic trading. All business is settles, whether this is done through a traditional market-maker system or by electronic trading. Those buying fixed income instruments want to be sure of receiving what they have bought an those selling want to receive the money they have been promised, regardless of the trading form. On the other hand, it is clear that it would be desirable to take the opportunity to design a new system that would provide a good means of handling settlements. This is particularly important as the increased volumes hoped for, which are the whole point of the new system, will create increased risks in terms of settlement. Today settlement on the fixed income market is done by means of net settlement in VPC. This works well in many ways and the routines are perceived as manageable by the market players, as far as I understand it. However, the system is nevertheless obsolete and involves risks. If one of the parties involved failed to meet its payments during the daily settlement, for instance, if one party was forced to make a suspension of payments or simply lacked sufficient liquidity, the situation could become troublesome. The existing routines can be called into question. One can imagine situations where settlement is not achieved, which could have consequences for the liquidity of the banking system. From the point of view of financial stability, this is an unsatisfactory situation.