On February 19, 2020 in Hanoi, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) hosted the 39th meeting of the ASEAN Working Committee on Capital Account Liberalization (WC-CAL).
The meeting was co-chaired by Mrs. Hoang Thi Phuong Hanh - Deputy Director General of the International Cooperation Department of the SBV, and Mrs. Edna Villa - Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP), with the participation of the representatives from the central banks of the ASEAN member states. On the Vietnamese side, there were representatives from the SBV Foreign Exchange Management Department, the Monetary & Financial Stabilization Department, the Monetary Forecasting & Statistics Department and the International Cooperation Department.
At the meeting, the participants focused on discussing the matters related to the implementation of the plans set out in the Roadmap for Capital Account Liberalization, including: (i) Evaluation form for Capital Account Liberalization (CAL Heatmap); (ii) National Plan of Capital Account Liberalization (Individual CAL Plan); (iii) Status of implementation of the Strategic Plan of Action (SAP), the Risk Management Table (RMT) and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on financial integration and financial stability; (iv) Policy dialogue on the prudential safeguards for capital account liberalization; (v) Sharing experiences on the use of the local currencies in the regional trade and investment; (vi) Database for policy dialogues on capital account liberalization; (vii) Capacity building activities within the Committee; and (viii) Priority activities of the Committee in 2020. In addition, the participants in the meeting were also updated on the new policies of some member countries, shared and discussed about the emerging issues and their impacts on the capital flows, such as COVID-19 outbreak, trade tensions between the United States and China,... Furthermore, the Working Committee also agreed on a number of key issues to report to the Senior Level Committee on ASEAN Financial Integration (SLC), and to the ASEAN Finance and Central Bank Deputies' Working Group (AFCDM-WG), as well as the ASEAN Steering Committee on Capacity Building (SCCB) for financial integration.
The meeting noted the important progress of the WC-CAL in implementing and following the guidance of the ASEAN Central Banks’ Governors related to the liberalization of the ASEAN regional capital accounts. The participants also shared a common view that the efforts to liberalize the capital accounts highly depends on the characteristics and the readiness of each country; at the same time, it is necessary to ensure the right to taking safe and prudent measures to maintain financial and macroeconomic stability. Above all, this is also an opportunity for the central banks in ASEAN to review the integration situation and plan their work both in depth and in breadth in the field of capital accounts, towards achieving the goal of financial integration within the framework of the ASEAN Vision 2025.
VA