Finance ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as China, Japan and South Korea agreed Sunday on the minimum scale of a regional foreign reserve swap.
"We also agreed that the total size of the multilateralized CMI would be at least 80 billion U.S. dollars," finance chiefs from the 10-member ASEAN and three East Asian countries said in a joint statement after concluding a meeting under the framework called ASEAN+3 in Madrid on Sunday.
Of the total amount, Japan, China and South Korea would contribute 80 percent, while ASEAN countries pay the remaining, according to the statement.
"I am glad to inform that the 11th ASEAN+3 finance ministers' meeting has come to a successful conclusion," Vietnam's Finance Minister Vu Van Ninh, who co-chaired the meeting with his Japanese counterpart, said at a press conference.
CMI, or Qing Mai Initiative, is a regional financing arrangement agreed by the 13 countries in 2000 to swap foreign exchange reserves, mainly on bilateral basis, in order for use when necessary to fight against speculative attacks on their currencies.
It was aimed at preventing a recurrence of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.
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