He said developing countries played a great role in maintaining the global economic growth and ASEAN, with a population of around 600 million, could serve as one of the world economy-supporting regions.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said ASEAN is playing a crucial role in spurring global economic growth as the US and European sovereign debt crises have led to global economic uncertainties.

"The global economy has been in turmoil over the past few months, marked with uncertainties. But ASEAN proves it has stable and strong growth," he said at an ASEAN Finance Ministers` Investor Seminar (AFMIS) here on Tuesday.

He said developing countries played a great role in maintaining the global economic growth and ASEAN, with a population of around 600 million, could serve as one of the world economy-supporting regions.

"Having strategic position and enjoying high investment inflows ASEAN plays a great role in encouraging the global growth," he said.

In this connection, to encourage the integration of ASEAN member states, they needed to enhance cooperation particularly in the financial sector, infrastructure financing and capital market.

To support infrastructure development, he said ASEAN member states set up an ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF) in September 2011 as part of their commitment to reduce infrastructure development disparities among them.

"The total surety fund for the AIF is US$4 billion until 2020 with 70 percent of it originating from the Asian Development Bank. Hopefully, the figure will increase to US$13 billion," he said.

Given the strong commitment, coupled with a momentum to increase investment growth, he expressed hope that the surety fund could ease the risk of the private sector wishing to get involved in the infrastructure development.

"The private sector plays a very important role in infrastructure development under a government-private financing scheme and the surety fund is expected to mitigate the impact of the crisis," he said.

ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) groups Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2011