Vietnam has pledged to contribute 10 million USD to the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF), said Finance Deputy Minister Tran Xuan Ha.

At the unofficial ASEAN Finance Ministers’ Meeting on the sidelines of the 17 th APEC Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Tokyo , Japan on November 5, ASEAN finance ministers discussed the establishment of the AIF, which will include capital contributions by member countries and capitals from bond issuance.

At the meeting, ADB and Malaysia committed to contributing 300 million USD; Indonesia , 120 million USD; Laos and Cambodia , each 100,000 USD. Meanwhile, Singapore , the Philippines and Thailand said they will consider the contribution of each at least 15 million USD each.

The ministers entrusted the Special Group to continue studying the monitoring mechanism, lending ability, criteria for project selection and other technical issues in order to make the fund operational as soon as possible.

They also discussed ASEAN’s opinion on G20’s financial issues. As the chair of the ASEAN 2010 cooperation process, Deputy Minister Ha reported the conference on a draft document on ASEAN’s opinion on G20’s financial issues.

The ASEAN finance ministers agreed to submit the document to the Vietnamese Prime Minister so that he will represent ASEAN leaders to deliver a speech at the upcoming G20 Summit in Seoul , the Republic of Korea .

In addition, the ministers acknowledged a report on the progress of formulating a scoring system for the development of the ASEAN bond market and a plan to organise the ASEAN Finance Ministers’ Investment Promotion Conference in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia later this year./.