On the supply side, the major markets China, India and ASEAN have made good progress in market reforms and cross-border connectivity. Allow me to elaborate on some recent measures. 9 China has facilitated greater cross-border investment flows and allowed for more crossborder market activities. In the past year alone, China liberalised access to the interbank bond market to foreign financial institutions and institutional investors. Offshore corporates can now tap the onshore market for Panda bond issuances, while Chinese corporates in certain parts of China – such as Chongqing, Suzhou and Tianjin – can issue bonds in offshore markets and repatriate the proceeds to support onshore economic activities. 10 India has likewise liberalised cross-border capital market activities. Indian banks and corporates are now allowed to issue Rupee-denominated bonds overseas as part of their external commercial borrowings which enables Indian issuers to diversify their funding base and achieve more efficient cost of funding. 11 In ASEAN, capital market development and integration efforts are underway. The ASEAN Trading Link provides investors with a single screen to access stock exchanges in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. These three jurisdictions have also adopted fully harmonised prospectus disclosure requirements known as the ASEAN Disclosure Standards, which facilitate the multi-jurisdictional offering of equity as well as debt. The ASEAN Collective Investment Framework (CIS) was launched in 2014 to facilitate cross-border offering of CIS to retail investors in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, under a streamlined authorisation process. A total of 12 funds are now available under the Framework.

19 Singapore already offers an excellent ecosystem of financial institutions, professional services like legal and accounting, credit rating agencies, and market infrastructure for Asian companies to issue, market, list and trade their bonds. To make it more attractive for Asian issuers to raise international capital in Singapore and benefit from the ecosystem here, we will introduce an Asian Bond Grant scheme next year. The scheme aims to broaden the base of issuers in our bond market, which will add to the breadth and diversity of debt instruments for the 4/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  investing community. Qualifying Asian issuances will be able to offset up to 50% of one-time issuance costs such as international legal fees, arranger fees and credit rating fees. We have consulted with local market participants on various aspects of the scheme to ensure a smooth implementation. I am glad to say that the industry has been supportive of this initiative, and together we are confident that this will enhance Singapore’s value proposition. Encouraging rated issuances 20 Even as we draw Asian issuers to Singapore, we want to encourage these issuers to be rated. Credit ratings improve general market transparency by providing independent and comparable assessments of the credit worthiness of issuers. Together with business and financial information provided in the offering documents or company announcements, credit ratings can assist investors to better understand the issuer’s business and financial health.