Haruhiko Kuroda, President of Asian Development Bank (ADB), on Sunday called for the development of Asia's bond market to mitigate the impact of the economic crisis.

"Positive progress in bond market could be a very important solution to Asia's problems faced by so many countries," Kuroda said at the ADB annual meeting.

"By developing bond market, Asia's large savings could be integrated into more productive investment, including infrastructure investment in Asia, may help reduce imbalance, one of the problems of the crisis," he said.

In a previous interview with Xinhua, the President said at the regional level, ADB is working with ASEAN+3 to accelerate the establishment of a credit guarantee facility in local currency bond markets to make it easier for private companies to meet their local currency funding needs.

"This facility could provide credit guarantees for bonds issued by domestic commercial banks to revitalize capital inflows and allow banks to continue lending in the crisis," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 3, 2009)