Finance ministers of 13 Asian nations agreed here on Sunday to set up a foreign exchange pool of at least 80 billion dollars (52 billion euros) to be used in the event of another regional crisis.
China, Japan and South Korea will contribute 80 percent of the funds with the rest coming from the 10 members of ASEAN, they said in a statement after holding talks on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Madrid.
The 13 nations agreed after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis to set up a system of mainly bilateral currency swap scheme known as the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) to protect their currencies from turmoil in the future.
At the ADB's last annual meeting in Japan in May 2007, they agreed to set aside part of their foreign reserves for a multi-nation scheme of reserves to be used in emergencies but did not decide on the size of the pool.
"We are committed to further accelerate our work in order to reach consensus on all of the elements which include concrete conditions eligible for borrowing and contents of convenants specified in borrowing arrangements," the statement said.
Earlier on Sunday Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said the 13 Asian nations were holding talks at the ABN meeting over the creation of a multinational foreign exchange pool. The 13 countries are China, Japan, South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), made up of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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