Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the heads of their three partners China, Japan, and Korea have agreed to create an $80-billion fund by next June to avert a regional financial crisis.

“Precautionary actions are needed to send a clear and unequivocal signal that Asean is resolute and better prepared than 10 years ago when the financial crisis hit the region in 1997,” the Asean+3 leaders said in a statement after their meeting Friday morning.

The leaders agreed that the group’s finance ministers and central bank governors should set up a working group to study proposals from the Philippines and Thailand on the new regional facility that would supersede the Chiang Mai Initiative of bilateral currency swap arrangements.

Thailand, in particular, proposed to increase the pooled reserve to $350 billion, while the Philippines pushed for fewer conditions in the facility.

The purpose of the new fund is to allow a country in danger of a foreign exchange crisis to rapidly call up financial firepower by swapping its currency for those of its neighbors’.

The aim would be to sell the borrowed money in the foreign exchange market to stem pressure on the currency under attack, thus preventing a repeat of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.