s green and sustainable bond issuances were arranged in hong kong. in 2023, the volumes amounted to us $ 30 billion, equivalent to 37 % of the market. hong kong was also the most preferred listing location for green issuances. the hkma and the government have kept enhancing our platform to support sustainable financing activities. we appreciate that while green is on the agenda for many corporate issuers, some are concerned about the additional cost and effort for issuing in green versus conventional format. we therefore rolled out a subsidy scheme three years ago, what we call the green and sustainable finance grant scheme, to help cover these additional costs and, more importantly, to promote transparency and accountability in the use of sustainable finance. recently, the financial secretary announced to extend the scheme by three more years, and expand its scope to cover transition bonds and loans. we will engage the market on the details, so stay tuned. 2 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches no discussion about the future of finance these day is complete without covering tech. the icma report highlights that digitalisation has been gaining traction particularly among asian issuers. last year, there were globally more than 30 outstanding bonds that had digital exposure, whether being on a digital ledger, digital exchange or digital clearing house ; and asian issuers accounted for almost half of these issuances by deal counts. in hong kong, we completed two tokenised government green bond issuances in just one year. the issuances have demonstrated clearly the potential of technology in enhancing the efficiency and transparency of the bond market. the most recent issuance that we did just last month was in four major currencies with a combined size of around us $ 750 million, matching the benchmark sizes of many traditional issuances and attracting subscription from a wide range of global institutional investors. in this issuance, investors had the option to follow largely business - as - usual processes through traditional market infrastructure, i. e. the central moneymarkets unit in hong kong and its external linkages with euroclear and clearstream. this has significantly broadened the bond's investor base and enhanced its liquidity. it is fair to say that the issuance brought tokenised bonds further beyond proof - of - concept, towards achieving more common application. the recent issuance also adopted icma's bond data taxonomy, which is a set of machine - readable language for key bond terms and information. when widely adopted across the market, this holds the

. currency crashes amplified the adverse effects as capital fled the region in a drove. the asian miracle went bust. the capital flows that had once fertilised the impressive growth eventually caused a capsize when the asian financial crisis hit us in 1997 – a lesson that we all still vividly remember. 4. the asian financial crisis gave us a much - needed wakeup call at a dear price. yet, looking back, the crisis also has its silver linings : the painful adjustments that followed prompted governments to strengthen economic fundamentals, enhance banking systems, deepen local bond markets, and build up foreign reserves to cope with potential external shocks. because of these developments, the region has been able to emerge from the recent global financial crisis relatively unscathed and is now one of the key driving forces supporting the global economic recovery. 5. but we cannot afford to be complacent, as we are now confronted with a new round of challenges in uncharted waters. the unprecedented monetary easing in the advanced economies has led to global excess liquidity. and with the robust recovery of the emerging bis central bankers ’ speeches markets, there are powerful push and pull factors driving investors to search for yields in developing economies including asia. from q3 2009 to q4 2010, the net capital inflows to emerging asia1 amounted to us $ 541 bn, the largest inflows in recent years. 6. the strong capital inflows and resultant abundant liquidity have led to exchange rate appreciation, fuelled credit growth and driven up asset prices in the region. with output gaps closing, inflationary pressures are accelerating in a number of asian economies. capital flows also complicate the macroeconomic policy responses. while exchange rate appreciation and monetary tightening could theoretically cool down the economy, in practice, they may attract even more speculative inflows to profit from interest rate arbitrage and currency appreciation. 7. so how should we cope with these challenges presented by the unprecedented scale of global excess liquidity? given the global nature of fund flows and the increasing interconnectedness of the global financial system, it is obvious that national policies alone are insufficient to tackle the challenges. we need greater international and regional cooperation to manage risks posed by volatile capital flows to global financial stability. i believe there are three main areas for cooperation. 8. first is enhancing the resilience of the global and regional financial systems through financial regulatory reforms. a large amount of work in this area is under way at the