KUALA LUMPUR: Financial sector integration efforts must be stepped up across Asean, said the former senior director of Asean Economic Cooperation, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti) P Ravidran Palaniappan (pic), at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) economic briefing yesterday.

“We need to step up the integration of the financial services sector because I see that as providing a lot of opportunities for the region,” he told reporters after the briefing.

Palaniappan stated that currently there are only a handful of countries whose financial sector is developed enough to implement initiatives like cross-border listing such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and these countries should proceed with such initiatives.

“We also have to be mindful [of] countries like Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos [where] the sector is still relatively underdeveloped, so there are many initiatives that can only be implemented by three or four countries [such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand],”

“So the countries that are ready to implement measures such as cross-border listing should go ahead with the financial sector initiatives,” he said.

Besides cross-border listing efforts, Palaniappan also stated the insurance sectors across Asean should be liberalised across the whole range of life and non-life insurance.

He also said that Asean governments should be mindful of integration efforts, and should avoid introducing restrictive policies.

“Avoid introducing restrictive policy measures. [Asean] is now like the EU, we [practise] step-by-step integration, but we should not slide back,” he commented.

According to ICAEW’s Economic Insight: Southeast Asia report, the recovery of global trade is imperative to Malaysia’s 4.3% targeted gross domestic product growth forecast for 2017.

The report stated that businesses in the Asean region will face worries about the impending risk of a credit slowdown in China amid debt overhang, and the policy effects of US President-elect Donald Trump.