10/8/2008 12:05:14 PM

Finance ministers from Southeast Asian nations at the heart of a financial crisis a decade ago sought Wednesday to reassure the world that they can weather the current global meltdown.

Speaking after an investment meeting in Dubai, ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations said they had "full confidence" in the bloc's ability to tackle the crisis roiling the world's financial and credit markets.

A joint statement issued at the end of the meeting said the 10-nation bloc's economic fundamentals remain sound even though gross domestic product growth might not match last year's 6.7 percent.

"ASEAN today is lean and fit, in part reflective of the significant reforms undertaken over the decade since the 1997 financial crisis," the group said.

Ministers said banks in the region, which stretches from Myanmar to Indonesia, should be able to withstand the financial turmoil rattling the world's banking system.

They said the region's banks have no shortage of capital, do not carry particularly large debt loads, and have limited exposure to the sort of toxic mortgage loans and other bad assets that have brought down banks in the U.S. and Europe.

"Our banks are strong," said Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop, Malaysia's finance minister. "We don't have a banking crisis, period."

The ministers' comments followed steep declines in stock markets across Asia. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged 9.4 percent, its biggest drop in 21 years.

Southeast Asia bore much of the brunt of the last major global financial crisis, which began in the summer of 1997 after a number of Southeast Asian currencies plunged in value.

ASEAN ministers said they expect to be hurt to some degree by the fallout from an economic slowdown in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they said they remained hopeful that the region would continue to benefit from strong trade elsewhere, including in China, India and the Persian Gulf.

"We will all be affected by the global slowdown. The tremors are being felt everywhere," Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said. "But the fault lines are not in Asia. And in particular, there are no fault lines in the ASEAN banking and financial system."