Southeast Asia’s strong exports and consumption, which helped sustain rapid growth throughout the region in 2017, are in a delicate spot as demand for electronic parts falls and interest rate hikes threaten to cool spending. Last year, Vietnam and Thailand enjoyed their highest rates of growth in gross domestic product in the past decade and […]
Read MoreThe Lancang Mekong Corporation Summit unlocked more funding for the Mekong River region. But not all the outcomes will be positive. By Yasmin Rasidi The second Lancang Mekong Cooperation Summit (LMC) concluded in January. Six national leaders met in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. The six leaders were from countries situated alongside the Mekong River. Chinese […]
Read MoreSMALL and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore and the Asean region see the need to invest more in technology in order to succeed under increasingly challenging conditions. These are the findings of the Asean SME Transformation Study by United Overseas Bank (UOB), EY and Dun & Bradstreet. The study found that three in five (60%) […]
Read MoreWhen Xi Jinping became Secretary of the Communist Party in 2008, China was facing hardships triggered by the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, the Washington-driven Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) coalesced Pacific nations into a trading bloc aligned to the US to compete with China’s influence on its neighbours. China’s model as the world’s manufacturing foundry at that […]
Read MoreWITH 158 million middle class consumers, Asean is often seen as the next frontier for the e-commerce market. Despite experiencing rapid expansion over the past five years, e-commerce penetration is still less than 2 per cent of total retail sales in Asean. However, we think the Asean e-commerce scene is about to change significantly, thanks […]
Read MoreMANILA, Philippines — Manufacturing conditions in the ASEAN region recovered slightly in December, still driven by domestic demand as export sales remain weak, according to the Nikkei ASEAN Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index released yesterday. The headline ASEAN Manufacturing PMI rose to 50.2 in January from 49.9 in December, indicating recovery as a reading of below […]
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Thailand
