Thailand
Asean capital markets prioritise sustainable network
Asean Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) is prioritising transparency, regulatory harmonisation and capital building for its next five-year action plan, aiming to sustainably grow regional capital markets and support environmental, social and governance (ESG) transactions.
Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, secretary-general of Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), attended the 33rd ACMF Chairs Meeting virtually yesterday to endorse five key priorities for ACMF’s 2021-25 action plan.
The plan’s five priorities comprise improving levels of transparency and disclosure, continuing regulatory harmonisation, intensifying capacity building, amplifying communication and awareness, and strengthening cooperation and coordination.
The meeting also welcomed the provision of technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to engage the climate bonds initiative, supporting ACMF’s implementation of a roadmap focused on sustainable finance initiatives.
The ACMF wants to explore Asean sustainability-linked bond standards to facilitate bond issuance. This should complement the suite of bond standards ACMF has already introduced for green, social and sustainable bonds.
To further foster the region’s sustainable finance network, the ACMF will conduct a study on the development of a common green, sustainable, and transitional taxonomy for Asean.
The forum plans to continue monitoring the international development of sustainability disclosure standards, as a means to further inform ACMF’s initiative on corporate sustainability disclosures under the roadmap.
The forum also announced it wants to continue to collaborate closely with the Asean working committee on capital market development (WC-CMD) to drive a sustainable finance agenda in regional capital markets.
Together with WC-CMD, the ACMF aims to put forth an Asean voice at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in late 2021.
ACMF also expressed appreciation to the ADB for its technical assistance with supporting activities in 2019-21.
The meeting saw the handover of the ACMF chairmanship from the State Securities Commission of Vietnam for 2020 to the Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam for 2021, with the SEC of Cambodia as vice-chair.
The ACMF is a grouping of capital market regulators from all 10 Asean jurisdictions: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2036067/asean-capital-markets-prioritise-sustainable-network