China’s central bank said in a statement today that central bankers of China, Japan and South Korea will hold regular meetings to discuss regional economic and financial issues. The mechanism is aimed to enhance dialogue among the financial policymakers of those countries, the statement said.

It also said the exchange will be conducive to monetary and financial stability of the region. The meeting would be held once a year and Beijing will host the first such meeting next year.

With the global financial crisis spreading to the real economies of Asian countries, Asian economies have joined hands to enhance cooperation to ward off the impacts of the crisis.

In May, East Asian finance ministers agreed to set up an $80 billion fund to upgrade the existing currency swap scheme to fight regional financial crises, taking the region a step closer to creating a full-scale Asian monetary fund.

Japan, China and South Korea agreed to provide 80 percent of the total fund, or $64 billion, with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, promising to provide the remaining $16 billion.

The fund will replace the previous arrangement - called the Chiang Mai Initiative - of mainly bilateral currency swaps, which came into being in 2000, and transform it into a reserve-pooling mechanism.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has amended regulations to allow qualified banks to finance mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

This is the first time banks in China can offer loans that will be used for M&As for all domestic enterprises. The latest amendment has lifted a ban since 1996 on such loans.

As one of the financial measures to boost economic growth, the amendment is aimed at bringing new opportunities for restructuring in many industries hit by the global economic downturn.

An unnamed general manager from a logistics company told the National Business Daily that his company has been looking for funding to help finance its acquisition plan. “We will study the CBRC’s latest move very carefully and try to obtain some loans for our projects,” the manager said.