Emerging Asian bond market

The economic performance of East Asia has been a remarkable story spanning several decades. The region has enjoyed macroeconomic stability, consistent growth, low inflation, increasing openness to international flows of trade and private capital, and a steady reduction in poverty and improvement in living standards. Along with rapid expansion of productive capacity and extensive structural changes in their economies, the financial sectors of these countries have also developed vigorously.

The region now has a well-developed banking system, and boasts four of the top twenty stock markets in the world. However, East Asia's bond markets are relatively small and at an early stage of development. The combined size of its bond markets at US$ 338 billion, or 22 percent of GDP at the end of 1994, was only one-third of the size of the region's equity markets.

This report has been prepared by World Bank staff and is based on studies of bond markets in China, Hong Kong. Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. These studies have been carried out in a col laborative effort between Bank staff and institutional counterparts in these countries. These studies are circulat ed separately as background papers.

The main objectives of the report are to provide a comprehensive survey of the East Asian bond markets, identify the best practices that have fostered development of these bond markets, and present a broad agenda for reforms that would further contribute to their development in the region.

The report finds great diversity among these markets in their size, sophistication, regulatory framework, and infra structure. Each of these countries has taken significant steps in recent years to improve the functioning of its bond market. In some countries, the results are already apparent and the bond markets have begun to grow, In others, more concerted efforts are required. However, it is clear that most of these markets poised for growth and, in most cases, the institutional prerequisites either are already in place or are being put in place.