Finance ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, China and South Korea will gather Saturday in Kyoto to discuss ways to enhance financial cooperation, including the launch of a multilateral currency swap deal.
During the one-day meeting in the ancient capital, the finance ministers are expected to agree on a plan for pooling funds from their foreign reserves as part of efforts to convert the current regional network of bilateral currency swaps worth nearly $80 billion into a multilateral framework, Japanese officials said.
The current web of bilateral currency swap deals, known as the Chiang Mai Initiative, was introduced in 2000 to prevent a recurrence of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.