This book examines the various policy options open to the ten countries of the region for improving and diversifying their financial resources. The Asian financial crisis exposed the vulnerabilities of Southeast Asia’s bank-based finance sector, and illustrated the pressing need to develop a more robust and multi-faceted financial infrastructure across the region. Looking ahead, sustained economic development in Southeast Asia will be constrained unless the region can embrace new sources of capital. Authored by experts in their respective fields, the chapters of this book examine such issues as the region’s current debt burden, the region’s banking sector since the 1997–98 crisis, micro-financing efforts in the region, new opportunities in project financing, developing venture capital capabilities, reviving foreign direct investment inflows, creating bond markets, developing the region’s lacklustre equity markets, and the potential benefits of financial integration.

In this report the Communities and Local Government Committee says the Government must stick to its long term house building targets, despite the credit crunch, but a greater proportion of the homes built should be social housing. The Committee is concerned that the £975 million borrowed by the Government from its 2010-11 budgets to build social rented housing now is not new money, and that the Government has been unable to say how that borrowing will be replaced. The Committee urges the Department for Communities and Local Government to: put pressure on the Treasury to ensure measures to revive the mortgage markets are implemented immediately; increase construction of new social housing, both to provide for housing need and as a means of maintaining capacity in the homebuilding industry whilst the market recovers; accelerate refurbishment programmes for social housing; acquire further social housing through the purchase of unsold stock and street properties; consider the purchase of unsold family homes which have been on the market for more than a year; encourage public sector bodies to make land available for the development of new homes. The report also urges the Government to do more to help those at risk of repossession by considering sanctions against lenders who repossess too quickly and by doing more to protect tenants and homeowners from unscrupulous landlords. An Office of Fair Trading recommendation for sale-and-rent back schemes should be implemented as a matter of urgency to protect the growing number of households falling behind in mortgage payments. The Committee would like to see more done to support housing associations, including increasing social housing grant where necessary.