The regional seminar, which was co-organised by the SC's Securities Industry Development Centre (SIDC), the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre (SEACEN) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was conducted as an activity under the APEC Financial Regulators' Training Initiative.

In recognition of the importance of training, Malaysia has actively supported and been involved in the APEC Financial Regulators' Training Initiative through the SC and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).

The seminar focused on management of the training process, techniques for conducting training needs assessments and the development of training programs based on model core curricula developed under the initiative for financial regulators.

Dr. Nik Ramlah Nik Mahmood, SC Director of Policy and Development said that the financial market regulators were fortunate that the APEC Ministers of Finance saw the need to improve the management of training processes and the quality and content of training programmes and courses nationally and the importance of properly coordinated training for regulators regionally.

"Commitment to training is pivotal to keeping banking and securities regulators abreast with market developments and enabling them to maintain order, fair play and efficiency with the financial market," said Dr. Nik Ramlah.

Over 50 participants representing regional bank supervisory and securities regulatory agencies from 15 countries, namely Australia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, People's Republic of China, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United States of America and Vietnam attended the high-level seminar. Presenters at the seminar included representatives from the Australian Securities Investments Commission and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The seminar is the first to be held since the APEC Ministers of Finance identified last year the need to strengthen the management of national training processes and programmes.