ASEAN considers disaster insurance fund

Apr 8, 2011, 15:01 GMT

Jakarta - South-East Asian finance ministers agreed Friday to push ahead with plans for a regional disaster insurance fund to deal with events such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

'We discussed the challenges and vulnerability of the region to disasters caused by natural hazards, including the economic cost of disaster losses,' the ministers said in a statement at the end of their meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

The ministers from the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) said they agreed 'to explore risk financing options and mechanisms that can be developed as part of the regional framework for disaster management and disaster risk reduction.'

ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan said growth in the regional bloc and East Asia was assured and predicted that the impact from last month's earthquake and tsunami in Japan would be minimum.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on ASEAN countries to work to speed up economic integration, the state-run Antara news agency reported.

Yudhoyono said ASEAN must take steps to liberalize financial services, develop capital markets and manage capital flows, according to Antara.

The president urged the ministers to work together to formulate customs policy to implement the so-called ASEAN Single Window, a project allowing member countries to exchange import and export data online.

'Another challenge is how to formulate taxation policy that can remove barriers to integration and guarantee regional dialogue which will result in real action,' he was quoted as saying.

Ten-member ASEAN aims to create by 2015 an ASEAN Economic Community, modelled on European integration of the 1960s and 1970s.

Yudhoyono said reducing poverty remained a key challenge for ASEAN, noting that 118 million people in the region live on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

The ASEAN nations are Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.