ASEAN Agreed To Eye On Hot-Money

In case of foreign exchange crisis, Korea may have a support up to 7 billion dollars from Japan, which is creased from previous 5 billion dollars.

Japan will aid 3 billion dollars additionally to Thailand and will also expand the amount of aid to Malaysia from 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion dollars. In consequence, the total sum of the currency swap will be expanded to 6 billion dollars.

ASEAN including Korea, Japan, and China, on May 9th, announced this agreement after the meeting of finance ministers at Honolulu, Hawaii. Jin Nyum, the deputy Prime minister and minister of finance and economy remarked at a press conference, ``To prevent other countries from chain financial crises when a certain regional country is under a currency crisis, ASEAN countries including Japan and China will provide currency swap with one another.`` He also added that Korea, Thailand, China are negotiating on the currency swap.

In addition, ASEAN finance ministers agreed to exchange information about international hot-money and monitor excessive transactions of foreign currencies. Kim Yong-Duk, director of the International financial policy division in the Ministry of finance and economy explained, ``Thanks to this agreement, financial crisis caused by the temporal outflow of hot money can be prevented.``

hcs@donga.com