Asia's Debt Capital Markets: Prospects and Strategies for Development

The Development of Effective Securities Markets Gary Schinasi International Monetary Fund One of the more important lessons of the crisis of the 1990s-^not just the Asian Crisis-is that the performance and structure of a country's financial system is an important fundamental factor for assessing that coimtry's overall economic performance and prospects, and as a destination for investment and asset returns. Market participants that are presently managing international portfolios now understand this very well. And as we all know, many countries are making strong efforts to reform their financial infrastructures, and move their financial systems more in the direction of a market-intermediated financial system and away from an exclusively bank-intermediated system. These reform efforts are putting in place some of the important infrastructure elements that are necessary for developing effective securities markets. However, emphasis should be placed on the word necessary: as many of these measures, and all of them taken together, are only necessary and not sufficient for estabUshing effective security markets.