Everything Everywhere All at Once: Revamping The ASEAN+3 RFA’s Lending Toolkit
The underutilization of CMIM facilities during recent crises highlights the need to reevaluate the effectiveness of ASEAN+3 region’s financial safety net.
The underutilization of CMIM facilities during recent crises highlights the need to reevaluate the effectiveness of ASEAN+3 region’s financial safety net.
Argentina first established its bilateral swap agreement (BSA) with China in 2009 to provide a liquidity line of up to ARS38 billion or CNY70 billion (about USD10.3 billion).
The Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) is the regional safety net of the ASEAN+3 region.
Being one of the largest RFAs in the world, the CMIM, with a lending capacity of $240 billion, has undergone continued improvements over the past decade.
The cases of the Philippines and Indonesia are among the reasons why the CMIM has never been tapped.
Since 1958, two years after joining the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
With a total financing capacity of USD240 billion, the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) is the world’s second largest regional financing arrangement (RFA) among active RFAs, after the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and much larger than most other arrangements in non-European regions.
Extreme liquidity shortage during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 have motivated some ASEAN+3 economies to initiate bilateral swap arrangements (BSA) with countries either inside or outside the grouping.
Conditionality is an essential supplement to crisis financing programs. However, such conditions have long been debated by scholars and policymakers globally, as to whether they promote economic growth and development or undermine the national sovereignty of borrowers and hinder economic recovery.
ASEAN+3 leaders have reaffirmed their strong support for the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) Agreement and the mandates given to the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) at the 24th ASEAN+3 Leaders’ Summit hosted by Brunei Darussalam on October 27, 2021.