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Vietnam attends Japan-ASEAN Startup Business Matching Fair in Thailand

Thirteen Vietnamese enterprises attended the Japan-ASEAN Startup Business Matching Fair 2024 held in Bangkok, Thailand on June 19.
Bangkok (VNA) – Thirteen Vietnamese enterprises attended the Japan-ASEAN Startup Business Matching Fair 2024 held in Bangkok, Thailand on June 19.
The event gathered over 60 startup and innovation firms from Japan and five ASEAN member states of Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
In his opening remarks, Japanese Ambassador to Thailand Otaka Masato emphasised that the fair, held annually since 2023, is an opportunity for startups to bring technologies related to ESG (Environment, Society and Governance), factory automation, health and logistics technologies to encourage sustainable business practices.
He expressed his confidence that seminars with the participation of leading e-commerce platforms from Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam at this fair will facilitate the expansion of sales and accelerate trade flows across Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
In a video speech sent to the conference, Vu Quoc Huy, Director of the National Innovation Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, said that the centre is honoured to be the co-organiser of the Japan-ASEAN Startup Business Matching Fair this year.
According to Huy, in recent years, Vietnam has emerged as a regional beacon of innovation and startup ecosystem thanks to the Government's strong determination to use innovation as a driving force for sustainable development.
As a dynamic support centre for startups, NIC aims to not only nurture a vibrant and supportive ecosystem for Vietnamese startups but also promote linkages with global partners through actively participating in international forums.
Within the framework of the fair, startups introduced technology solutions in different fields such as agriculture, health, education, insurance, logistics, e-commerce, cybersecurity, and real estate management./.

Top German firm keen on opening tech factory in Cambodia

Robert Bosch GmbH, a parent company of Bosch Cambodia Co Ltd and a world-leading engineering and technology firm headquartered in Germany, agreed to send a regional envoy to examine the possibilities of opening its factory in the Kingdom.

The commitment was made on Thursday during the meeting between Sun Chanthol, Deputy Prime Minister and First Vice-Chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) and Alexander Weichsel, Commercial Plant Manager of Bosch in Nuremberg, Germany.

The Deputy Prime Minister is on a mission trip to the European Union (EU), leading the delegation to attract foreign investments into the Kingdom’s priority sectors from June 9-18.

During the discussion, Chanthol told Weichsel that the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) encouraged the private sector to explore investment opportunities that emerged in the country including agriculture, agro-industry, automobiles, electronic, renewable energy and tourism industries.

Noting the company’s potential, he urged Weichsel to consider choosing Cambodia as a prime location to expand the production chain, supplying to other Southeast Asia countries.

The Bosch Manager gave a positive response, promising to send the company representative based in Singapore and Vietnam to examine in detail aimed at opening the new factory in the Kingdom.

Later in the day, the Deputy Prime Minister also met Christiane Riefler-Karpa, Managing Director of Memmert GmbH, a company developing and manufacturing laboratory equipment.

For full article, please read here

Reporter: Nhean Chamrong 

Cambodia records trade surplus with Vietnam

Cambodia has recorded a trade surplus with Vietnam in the first five months of 2024, making Vietnam the second biggest market for Cambodia’s products after the US.

In the past, Cambodia’s exports to Vietnam have been less than Cambodia’s imports from Vietnam. However, the momentum of Cambodia’s exports to Vietnam has increased significantly in the last several months.

Figures from the General Department of Customs and Excise (GDCE) showed on Tuesday that in the first five months this year, Cambodia exported goods worth $1.88 billion to Vietnam, an increase of 42.6 percent, while imports from Vietnam were worth only $1.67 billion, an increase of eight percent compared to the same period last year.

This gave Cambodia a trade surplus with Vietnam to the tune of $216 million.

“Vietnam has significantly increased its agricultural purchases from Cambodia after it opened up a free trade market with the European Union, which boosted Vietnam’s demand for raw materials,” said Penn Sovicheat, Secretary of State and spokesman at the Ministry of Commerce.

Climate change, which is causing concerns about declining global agricultural output, is also part of the reason behind Vietnamese firms increasingly seeking to buy agricultural products or raw materials from abroad, including from Cambodia, to serve their production lines, he said.

For full article, please read here


Reporter: Chea Vanyuth 
Source: Khmer Times

Where South-east Asian contenders can carve a niche in the GenAI landscape

THE surge of interest in generative AI (artificial intelligence) has fuelled a global investment boom. The exponential adoption of technologies such as ChatGPT, which amassed 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch, has captivated investors hungry for the next big thing.

Despite a decline in overall AI private investment last year, funding for generative AI surged to a nearly eightfold increase in funding from 2022, to reach a staggering US$25.2 billion, according to the Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024. Key players such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Inflection bagged substantial funding rounds.

Generative AI, characterised by its ability to create original content such as text, images, video, audio or software code in response to user prompts, is also poised to become a US$60 billion market by 2025. Projections suggest a doubling to US$120 billion by 2027, according to Boston Consulting Group.

In this dynamic landscape, venture capitalists are keenly hunting in areas where emerging companies can carve out niches to hold their own against established incumbents.

Identifying fertile ground for competition

Similar to other frontier technologies, the generative AI ecosystem comprises the application layer, middle layer, foundational layer, as well as the infrastructure layer.

Incumbents dominate the infrastructure layer, which encompasses cloud platforms and hardware manufacturers responsible for running training and inference workloads for generative AI models.

Numerous entities such as GPT-4 and Gemini have gained an early foothold in the foundational layer, where the development of foundational models forms the backbone of generative AI progress. In the middle layer, there are popularly used platforms like LangChain and HumanLoop.

While infrastructure and foundational layers are dominated by early winners, the middle and application layers, that streamline human interaction with AI by allowing the dynamic creation of content, offer fertile ground for competition among keen contenders.

The application layer of generative AI consists of three distinct sub-groupings: generalised applications, domain-specific applications, and integrated applications.

Generalised applications are engineered to execute a diverse array of tasks spanning various domains and industries.

These applications harness the power of large-scale pre-trained models, extensively trained on diverse datasets, to generate content or execute tasks across a spectrum of contexts. Illustrative examples encompass text, image, code and video generation.

At the forefront of such advancements are tech behemoths such as OpenAI with its ChatGPT; Google and its BERT search model, and Microsoft with its Turing-NLG.

Domain-specific applications remain an area of opportunity for South-east Asia

Nevertheless, opportunities still abound for applications tailored to meet the needs and requirements of specific industries, such as finance, healthcare, sustainability, manufacturing, and education.

This is because such applications are more responsive in their own areas, especially when companies train them on high-quality, unique, and proprietary data. This is where South-east Asia could potentially develop its competitive edge.

Integrated applications, where existing software solutions are enhanced with generative AI functionality, are another potential play. For instance, StoreHub, a point of sale system for the restaurant and retail sector, deploys generative AI to provide their F&B customers with highly accurate predictive capabilities.

In healthcare, we have seen examples of generative AI improving outcomes, such as enhancing the accuracy of diagnosis, as it harnesses the collective knowledge of experts in a particular domain.

In South-east Asia, most markets’ healthcare ratio ranks below the global average of 15 doctors per 10,000 residents according to the World Bank. Generative AI may be able to tackle labour shortage and bring quality healthcare to more patients through means like reducing administrative workload, expediting health screening and training a chatbot to handle multiple queries.

Within finance, we see generative AI improving the accuracy and robustness of systems such as credit scoring, and reaching and serving customers where it would entail prohibitive costs previously. In South-east Asia, around 70 per cent of residents remain unbanked or underbanked today.

In highly-regulated industries such as finance and healthcare, generative AI could further help businesses keep up-to-date with regulatory changes.

No doubt, incorporating generative AI in a relevant way can potentially increase a startup’s value and appeal to investors.

We have also seen multi-modal generative AI propositions where users are able to interact with the AI via text or voice; and where the output could be audio or text.

These companies have gone on to develop modals trained on local languages, including nuances from dialects and colloquial phrases and sentences, making them relevant to regional enterprises.

Proprietary data as an AI moat

Beyond playing in areas where South-east Asian founders have a better chance of winning, it is also important to recognise that building a strong moat is critical in this fast-moving space.

In venture capital circles, the most talked-about AI moat revolves around proprietary data, recognised as the lifeblood of AI and the cornerstone of foundation models. As models grow in size, their hunger for data expands exponentially, a trend forecasted to deplete new high-quality data sources by 2026.

Access to proprietary data becomes paramount, to allow these models to transcend data limitations and fortify their moat. The catch, of course, is that users might not be willing to share their data.

Patsnap, a Singapore-founded tech unicorn that operates a patent and innovation database, employs its AI applications to amp up usage of its platform for more than 12,000 customers across 50 countries.

Patsnap holds a database which includes over 180 million patents dating back to the 1800s, and over 130 million pieces of literature from 170 jurisdictions, accumulated over more than 15 years.

Patsnap developed its own Large Language Model (LLM) specifically trained on proprietary, market-leading innovation data within its repository.

With its focus on innovation data, search results link back to the source of journals and patents, providing credible, trustworthy references, and the training data is kept up-to-date with the latest developments. There is less likelihood of the AI suffering “hallucinations” compared to more generic LLMs.

While access to proprietary data is key, companies’ top AI-related concerns include privacy, data security, and reliability, according to the Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024.

It will be key for developers to be able to address these issues, for instance by developing their own LLMs where sensitive data can be kept within closed environment shielded by robust firewalls.

Having developed their own LLMs, AI-using companies will need to innovate further to step up usage. After launching its LLM in 2023, Patsnap introduced its AI assistant, Hiro, recently in January.

Hiro allows users to explore patent and non-patent literature more easily with its chat-like search functionality, as well as generate technology reports and invention disclosures quickly. These tasks, which used to take a week, may now be done in a matter of seconds.

With 65 per cent of the population achieving middle class status in Southeast Asia, the region is ripe with investment opportunities. Generative AI applications and use cases are constantly expanding, and this proliferation not only heralds the ascent of established players but will also foster the emergence of promising challengers.

There are over 670 million people with various needs living in the region. We are hopeful that generative AI will speed up the reach of domain-specific and integrated applications, and help to raise productivity and bring down the cost of serving these 670 million across the region.

Source: The Business Times

Link: Here

Asean – the hotspot for foreign direct investments

Asean emerges as FDI inflow magnet

THE South-east Asian region is riding high as global supply chains shift, driven by geopolitical tensions and pandemic-related disruptions that are pushing more companies to adopt China+1 diversification strategies.

According to latest available data, foreign direct investment (FDI) into the region’s six major economies – Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines – surged 5.5 per cent to a record high of US$224 billion in 2022 from the previous year.

Singapore saw the highest increase in value, accounting for over 60 per cent of FDI in the region.

The region’s share of global FDI is also on the rise. From under 15 per cent in 2021, it rose to more than 17 per cent a year later, according to an investment report released last December by the Jakarta-based Asean Secretariat.

FDI for Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam hit record levels in 2022, while Cambodia and Indonesia’s growth was flat, although levels of investment remained elevated.

The report noted that the inflows to Asean countries surpassed China for the second consecutive year.
A May 29 report by OCBC attributed the shifting trend of investment direction to a diversification of the global and regional supply networks, driven by strategies such as China+1 and friendshoring.

Strong domestic reforms and an encouraging macro environment are also sweetening the region’s proposition as an investment spot.​

FDI inflows into Asean rose to US$236 billion in 2023, a 24 per cent increase from the annual average of US$190 billion between 2020 and 2022, said the OCBC report.

US dominates as Asean’s top investor

Over 71 per cent of FDI inflows to Asean are from the top 10 sources, compared to 63 per cent in 2021, with the US, Japan as well as China and Hong Kong taking the lead.

The US remained the region’s largest investor: investments rose 6 per cent to US$37 billion, with a bulk or around US$20 billion ploughed into the manufacturing and finance sectors.

Japan, the second highest investor (excluding intra-Asean investments), rose nearly 24 per cent to US$26 billion in 2022, focusing on storage, transportation, automotive parts, and activities related to electric vehicles (EVs).

On the other hand, China’s FDI inflows fell nearly 12 per cent to US$15 billion. About half of the investment was channeled to manufacturing, real estate, infrastructure and the digital economy. China was the largest investor in Cambodia and Myanmar.

The FDI inflows from China, said OCBC, indicate the changing backdrop, including geopolitical factors. “Post-pandemic, FDI inflows from China into the Asean region have sharply increased, diversifying from infrastructure development into electronics, resources and food industries,” said the bank.

All in the Asean family

Intra-regional investment rose for the third consecutive year to a record US$28 billion in 2022; it was also the second largest source of investment that year.

The top five industries – financial and insurance, manufacturing, information and communication, real estate, and energy – attracted 87 per cent of intra-Asean investment.​

Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam received two-thirds of intra-region investment. Singapore was the largest source, with US$18 billion, a 10 per cent increase from 2021.

Despite rising intra-Asean investment, the share of total FDI inflows has remained under 20 per cent since 2017, according to the investment report. The report estimated that the compound annual growth rate of non-Asean FDI inflows between 2015 and 2022 was 9.2 per cent – 2.5 times the growth rate of intra-regional FDI.

Source: The Business Times
Link: Here

South-east Asian economies no longer tethered to Fed’s decisions

MARKET watchers worldwide are eagerly anticipating the outcome of the US Federal Reserve’s next meeting later this week. Closer to home, regional central banks are also gearing up for key meetings. The Bank of Thailand (BOT), for one, will hold its next rate review on Wednesday (Jun 12), just before the Fed’s decision.

Expectations for the Fed’s and BOT’s decisions could not be more different.

While watchers generally expect the Fed to stand pat on its elevated benchmark rate, the word on the street is that Thailand may announce a rate cut. Elsewhere in the world, the European Central Bank last week started cutting rates from record highs, by 0.25 percentage point.

As for Singapore, the central bank has a unique monetary policy due to the Republic’s exchange-rate targeting approach.

Nonetheless, such a divergence between the Fed and the rest of South-east Asia would have, at least, seemed unlikely or even impossible.

After all, the region’s economies including Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines suffered massively from capital outflows during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) in the late 1990s, with deep recessions, soaring unemployment and collapsing currencies as investors pulled money out.

Higher regional rates
Since then, rates in the region have generally stayed higher than rates in developed markets, particularly the US. South-east Asian currencies cannot provide the safety and stability that the greenback offers, so there was a need to offer investors a significantly higher return.

Fortunately, things have changed in recent years. As post-Covid inflation started to bite hard in late 2021, South-east Asian central banks followed the Fed in raising rates.

One big difference, however, was that the quantum of monetary tightening has been far lower. With inflationary pressures less severe in South-east Asia than in developed economies such as the US and Europe, regional central banks have been able to tame price pressures with lower rate increases.

The Fed drove its benchmark rate up by over five percentage points to hit a peak of 5.5 per cent back in July 2023 and has since held it unchanged.

In contrast, the BOT’s rate stands at only 2.5 per cent – a rise of two percentage points for this tightening cycle – while Bank Negara Malaysia’s peak rate stands at 3 per cent, an increase of 1.25 percentage points. On its part, Bank Indonesia’s official rate is at 6.25 per cent, marking a hike of 2.75 percentage points.

The largest hike in South-east Asian interest rates has been in the Philippines, with a jump of 4.5 percentage points to a policy rate of 6.5 per cent. Still, the quantum of the rise was lower than the Fed’s rate increase.

Resilient positions
Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia now have a higher degree of monetary policy independence because their external balances – including the current account position, foreign exchange reserves and inflows of foreign direct investment – are much stronger and more resilient than in earlier periods.

These four countries ran current account deficits of between 3.4 and 7.9 per cent of their gross domestic product in 1996, the year just before the AFC.

Today, these current account balances are much stronger.

For instance, Indonesia even ran a current account surplus amounting to 1 per cent of GDP in 2022 – and registered a tiny deficit of just 0.1 per cent of GDP last year – amid a boom in key commodity exports.

Thailand will also return to a surplus position of 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2023, having run in deficit for two years in a row since 2020.

Malaysia has run a consistent current account surplus even before the pandemic. The surplus has come down from 3.1 per cent of GDP in 2022 to 1.2 per cent last year, but we expect it to go up to 2 per cent this year.

Meanwhile, post-Covid, the Philippines’ current account deficit has narrowed dramatically from 4.4 per cent of GDP in 2022 to just 1.3 per cent last year.

These improvements have come about due to massive structural changes in each economy. This includes steps to raise productivity and competitiveness, improved supervision of the financial sector and more transparent and liquid capital markets.

These changes are continuing. Indonesia recently embarked on more downstream efforts to boost its value-added exports, while Thailand has loosened its visa restrictions to boost tourist arrivals that will in turn increase its services exports.

As the world enters a cycle of monetary loosening, South-east Asian economies can afford to either ease earlier or by more.

More flexibility
With their improved financial stability, these economies now have more flexibility to adjust interest rates to levels that are optimal in balancing growth and inflation in their respective countries. They no longer need to closely follow the Fed.

For now, the Philippines’ central bank sounds rather neutral or even dovish based on its latest monetary policy decision statement. Interest rate cuts are probably near and its currency, the Philippine peso, is one of the more resilient currencies against the US dollar. The country has the flexibility to cut ahead of the Fed without jeopardising its currency stability, to support its softening growth momentum.

While there are concerns over household debt in Thailand, its strong external position and low inflation mean that it can also undergo monetary policy easing to boost its growth momentum. The first cut could be as early as the BOT’s review on Wednesday.

Malaysia has seen its export growth softening, but the strength of domestic demand means that it can afford to keep its monetary policy stance unchanged for now.

Indonesia will likely be the most cautious in cutting rates, given the risk of escalated imported inflation.

In addition, while the country’s external position has improved significantly over the years, Bank Indonesia will probably err on the side of caution in keeping rates high to attract capital inflows back onshore.

Singapore, though operating not via a direct interest rate mechanism but through an exchange rate policy, could also ease its monetary policy to support growth, as growth momentum is slowing.

Regardless of what each central bank does, they now have much more freedom in adjusting monetary policy than before. The Fed’s influence as the de facto setter of interest rates is waning, at least in this part of the world.

Source: The Business Times
Link: Here

Singapore and other major Asean economies see stronger investments amid supply chain shifts

SINGAPORE - Singapore and five other Asean countries have received most of the investment flows as companies diversify their supply chains and adopt a China-plus-one strategy, economists said.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into the Asean economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam have been gaining traction, although there are some differences across sectors and countries, they added.

Inflows into the region rose to US$236 billion (S$318 billion) in 2023, compared with the annual average of US$190 billion from 2020 and 2022.

The major contributors were the United States, Japan, Europe, as well as mainland China and Hong Kong, attracted by the region’s strong domestic reforms, which have led to improving macroeconomic fundamentals.

Many firms have diversified their operations away from China, following the Covid-19 pandemic and amid rising geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington.

According to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, 40 per cent of those surveyed in 2023 had redirected investment or planned to redirect investment originally meant for China.

For these companies, South-east Asia was the most preferred destination, with technology hardware, software and services companies looking at Singapore. The US was the second most preferred destination, followed by Mexico, the survey showed.

In its latest report on Asean penned by its economists Lavanya Venkateswaran, Ahmad Enver and Jonathan Ng, OCBC Bank said Singapore received the bulk of the inflows, followed by Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

Most investments into the region went into manufacturing, financial and insurance, transportation, construction and wholesale sectors.

FDI inflows from China into the region, which tumbled during the pandemic in 2020, have since rebounded, but the nature of its investments into Asean has shifted from infrastructure to electronics, resources and food industries. 

The manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, real estate and professional services sectors have seen higher FDI inflows from China too.  

China has become one of the top contributors to FDI inflows in Indonesia, surpassing the US and Japan. Indonesia accounted for almost a third of China’s investment in Asean in 2022.

Most of its investments are parked in the manufacturing sector, OCBC economists said. 

In contrast, the Philippines has not benefited as much from Chinese investments. This is not surprising, given geopolitical tensions between the two countries have worsened in recent years, they said. 

Singapore continues to be the largest recipient of FDI from China, reflecting the Republic’s status as a financial hub with strong synergies in the manufacturing, real estate and services sectors. 

Mainland China and Hong Kong’s share of the total FDI into Singapore has been rising in recent years, from almost US$52 billion in 2015 to US$113.2 billion at the end of 2022. 

Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance have set up regional offices in the Republic. 

According to Enterprise Singapore, there were over 400 Shanghai companies in Singapore as at end-2022.

Beyond South-east Asia, India and Mexico have also benefited, Nomura’s economist Sonal Varma said, noting that trade diversion and reshoring decisions have shifted to take in production relocation.

Firms in electronics, apparel and toys, automobile and components, capital goods, as well as semiconductor manufacturing, are looking to invest in India, in part due to its large consumer market, she added.

In Vietnam, foreign interest has shifted away from textile manufacturing to other parts of the sector, including automobiles, electronics, solar panels, shipping containers and chemicals.

Gains to the rest of Asean are more mixed, with Thailand drawing more interest in electric vehicles (EVs), printed circuit boards and consumer durables, while Indonesia’s prospects are tied mainly to the development of the EV battery supply chain.

“Among the front runners, we think Vietnam will remain a strong beneficiary. In contrast, given its structural constraints, benefits to Thailand will likely be confined to low-value-added sectors, with the exception of perhaps the EV segment, which could leverage the strong domestic auto supply chain,” said Ms Varma.

In India, Nomura sees investment opportunities in stocks related to the electronics and semiconductors, autos, solar energy, pharmaceuticals and defence sectors. 

In Thailand, opportunities are seen in stocks involved in electronics, automotive and industrial estates, while in Indonesia, those are in the metals and mining space. 

However, Ms Varma warned that equity investors looking to leverage the shift in supply chain trends must be patient as the transition takes time.

Source: The Straits Times
Link: Here

More Singapore firms seeking to expand into Indonesia market

JAKARTA - More Singapore companies are seeking help to enter and grow their business in the Indonesian market, as the gradual recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in both these nations gives impetus to expansion plans.

In 2022, 297 local firms engaged the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) to take their goods and services to the region’s largest economy – up from 185 in 2021 and 78 in 2020. They were from sectors that included healthcare, education, telecommunications, and food and beverage.

The firms consulted the SBF under its GlobalConnect@SBF scheme, which was set up in partnership with Enterprise Singapore to support companies planning to grow globally.

Under the scheme, which was launched in November 2019, SBF has a centre in Indonesia that firms can turn to for advice and use to meet business partners. The Singapore Enterprise Centre in central Jakarta is staffed by SBF’s local market advisers.

Speaking to members of the local media last Thursday, Mr Hisyaamuddin Abu Bakar, country head for Indonesia at SBF, noted that businesses are drawn by the large Indonesian market. Indonesia’s population stands at almost 280 million, making it the world’s fourth-most populous country.

SBF handles various inquiries from Singapore in areas such as incorporation, compliance and regulations in Indonesia, said Mr Hisyaamuddin.

“So we will facilitate them on a case-to-case basis in what they need. But mainly, most of them are interested in finding business partners, and they are worried about how to enter the Indonesian market.”

He added that the interest in Indonesia from Singapore firms has been high, even during the pandemic.

Singapore’s bilateral trade with Indonesia was $59.1 billion in 2021, a 21 per cent increase from the year before. The total value of Singapore’s investments in Indonesia amounted to US$9.4 billion (S$12.5 billion) in 2021. Since 2014, Singapore has also occupied the top spot on the list of Indonesia’s investors.

Over the past three years, SBF has conducted more than 900 sessions where it advised businesses on how to grow in the Indonesian market, and helped facilitate 36 projects by Singapore firms in Indonesia.

One firm that enlisted SBF’s expertise was International Cancer Specialists, a medical company that provides cancer screening and treatment.

When the company wanted to enter the Indonesian market in 2021, its management was unsure whether it could get credible professionals to help it meet Indonesia’s legal and tax requirements for companies.

Mr Benjamin Tan, the company’s chief executive and executive director, said that with SBF’s help, it managed to hire a good lawyer and tax agent within a few weeks.

“We managed to get everything up and running... within three months,” he said.

IndoPanda, which provides Chinese language lessons as well as services to send students to China for further studies, tapped SBF to find new business opportunities in Indonesia.

CEO Hendri Zhang said that at the end of 2021, SBF helped his business connect with potential clients and partners, including DBS Indonesia.

“The local staff there expressed interest in learning Mandarin, so they connected us with the human resources personnel in the company. And very quickly, we were able to give them a proposal about the courses that we offer,” he said.

DBS Indonesia eventually had 20 of its staff attend some courses, and it became one of IndoPanda’s first major clients, added Mr Zhang.

He highlighted how SBF had advised him to conduct free trials of lessons as well as free webinars to introduce potential customers to his company, as customers in Indonesia prefer to try out a service before spending money on it.

“Through this advice, we make fewer mistakes, because this is the new market, right? So sometimes, the lesson learnt could be quite hard. So with that advice, we are able to avoid some pitfalls,” he said.

Source: The Straits Times
Link: Here

Global trade in electric vehicles booms

Opportunities abound in the electric vehicle (EV) market as industry sales have been rising dramatically in recent years, accounting for more than a third of all car imports last year and signifying a possible new direction in the global trade of transport equipment, according to a new report.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) in a new blog post revealed that import data between 2017 and 2023 show a significant shift towards EVs in general. Initially, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles represented a modest fraction of total car imports by value, starting at about 2.5%, 0.8%, and 1%, respectively. However, trade in EVs has grown significantly since then, the post said.

Beyond 2020, hybrids and plug-in hybrids have shown consistent growth, with hybrids initially experiencing more dynamic growth. However battery EVs have begun exhibiting the highest growth, bringing the value of their imports close to that of hybrids, indicative of a significant shift towards fully electric models, said the WTO report.

“By the end of 2023, EVs accounted for more than a third of all car imports in value terms. Although the growth rate appeared to slow down in 2023, the pronounced upward trend for EVs, particularly battery EVs, signifies a substantial change in demand and could suggest the direction in which the global automotive industry may go in the future,” it continued.

In the Philippines, Republic Act No. 11697 or the Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act (EVIDA) lapsed into law on April 15, 2022. EVIDA establishes a comprehensive roadmap for the EV industry designed to accelerate the development, commercialization and utilization of EVs in the country.

The Asian Development Bank early last year noted that like its Southeast Asian neighbors, the Philippines has a huge potential as a market and manufacturing hub for EVs since the country is the world’s second biggest supplier of nickel, which is used to make EV battery cells.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in a report last year urged developing countries like the Philippines to act swiftly to leverage the new opportunities presented by the booming market for green technologies, including those relating to EVs.

“We are at the beginning of a green technological wave in which early adopters of new technologies can rapidly move ahead and create lasting advantages in related economic sectors,” the publication said. “Therefore favourable conditions to catch up technologically and economically are available only for a short time.”

According to the WTO post, the United States was the leading global importer of EVs last year, with battery, hybrid and plug-in hybrid EVs recording imports of US$19 billion, $17.8 billion and $6.9 billion, respectively. “These figures represent more than one-fifth of total US car imports by value and signal an increasing adoption of electric mobility,” said the report.

Imports of EVs have also grown considerably in some European countries and in the Republic of Korea. In Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland in particular, the import value of electric cars has overtaken that of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.

“As Belgium and the Netherlands are home to the two busiest ports in Europe, they may act as a transit point into other European countries,” the post commented.

Meanwhile, the total number of EVs exported has remained relatively stable, with over 43 million units sold in 2023 from over 40 million units exported in 2017. However, the types of vehicles exported underwent a dramatic change.

In 2017, Germany and Japan were the top exporters of passenger vehicles, but the proportion of EVs they exported was negligible. In contrast, in 2023 about one-third of the car exports from these countries were EVs. By increasing its emphasis on the export of hybrids, Japan has become the top global exporter of these vehicles, said the report.

In 2023, China became the leading exporter of passenger vehicles overall, with over 5.4 million units exported, of which roughly 1.8 million units, or about a third, were EVs. It exported over 1.5 million battery EVs, meaning that one out of every four battery EVs exported in 2023 originated in China, the post said.

Innovations in climate-resilient natural cosmetic ingredients pushed

Brands need to innovate to future-proof natural cosmetic ingredient supply and avoid shortages as extreme weather events are threatening crop security, according to trend forecaster WGSN.

In a report, Sophie Benson and the WGSN beauty team said controlled environment agriculture (CEAs), such as greenhouses and vertical farms, can grow natural cosmetic ingredients, regardless of season or conditions.

The report said innovative CEAs are creating resilient agriculture spaces where the environment can be controlled and circular farming principles can be implemented to lower crops' reliance on water and energy.

“Partner with farmers who use CEAs to future-proof ingredient supply and offer improved yields and potency of botanicals,” it said.

The report cited contract manufacturer Capsum (France) which found that when controlling growing conditions in its vertical-farmed ingredients, it saw a threefold increase in polyphenols compared to traditional growth conditions.

WGSN said challenging conditions also provide the perfect lab for testing and creating resilient crop strains and ingredients.

It said businesses can collaborate with universities, physicists and space agencies to integrate space technology into climate-resilient ingredient developments and selections.

“Testing products in space and ‘space-mining’ ingredients will raise concerns surrounding sustainability and ethics as human-driven space exploration is polluting the cosmos with space junk. Be considerate of space environments and avoid exploitative approaches in orbit,” the report added.

Brunei poised for stronger recovery led by the non-O&G sector

Brunei Darussalam’s economy is poised for further strengthening this year, driven by a strong recovery in 2023 and robust activities in the non-oil and gas sector, according to a report by the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO).

The downstream oil and gas industry is expected to remain supportive of growth, with planned diversification into new products. Despite challenges in ongoing oil and gas rejuvenation efforts, activities are projected to improve, leading to enhanced production in the near term. The government’s commitment to accelerating diversification towards less carbon-intensive industries aims to bolster economic resilience.

The report, based on AMRO’s Annual Consultation Visit to Brunei Darussalam in November 2023, and data available up to February 29, 2024, highlights Brunei’s economic developments and outlook. The economy expanded by 1.4 per cent in 2023, with growth expected to strengthen to 2.7 per cent this year, driven by exploration and development activities in offshore oil and gas fields.

Encouragingly, the non-oil and gas sector is anticipated to lead the economic recovery, supported by expansions in downstream activities, agri-food, transportation, and tourism sectors.

Inflationary pressures have eased, reflecting lower commodity prices and supply chain normalization post-pandemic. Headline inflation is projected to increase to 1.4 per cent this year, driven by food inflation.

Source: Borneo Bulletin

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Brunei recorded highest ship traffic in 2023: Minister

In 2023, Brunei Darussalam saw the highest number of inbound and outbound ship traffic coming into its ports, at 12,801 ships. It shows that the shipping sector has been one of the beneficiaries of the growth and developments in the downstream and export-oriented industries.

This was shared by Minister of Transport and Infocommunications Pengiran Dato Seri Setia Shamhary bin Pengiran Dato Paduka Haji Mustapha during the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and scholarship at The Empire Brunei.

The minister said, “The planned expansion and renovation of Muara Port as well as development of an integrated marine maintenance and decommissioning yard will further grow the shipping requirements in the country as well as attract more traffic into our port and facilities. Undoubtedly, this will also grow the demand for Darussalam Pilotage Services Sdn Bhd (DPS) pilotage and towage services. He added, “The Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications and the Maritime and Port Authority of Brunei Darussalam (MPABD) are tasked to further improve the local content aspects of the maritime sector” .

“The industry has the ability to generate job opportunities for locals. In addition, MPABD also looks at reassessing and sustaining our capabilities, through the Brunei Maritime Academy (BMA), to develop and cultivate a highly-skilled maritime workforce that supports and drive our economic diversification and sustainable development efforts.”

The minister also commended the DPS scholarship programme by saying, “The true measure of an organisation’s potential lies in the calibre of its human capital.

He noted that the DPS’ vision is geared towards nurturing a new generation of maritime pilots, who will not only helm the ships but also chart a course towards a sustainable and innovative future. 

Source: Borneo Bulletin

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