Syetarn Hansakul

Asia’s needs for infrastructure are vast. Getting the right financing mix for infrastructure projects would be rewarding for borrowers and lenders and, more importantly, provide a boost to GDP growth for the region in the medium term. Despite some remarkable success stories, providing adequate transport networks, power, water and other facilities remains a monumental task in Asia. This note gives a detailed account on selected country experiences with infrastructure financing in Non-Japan Asia. As different countries are at different stages of development and face diverse macroeconomic backdrops and endowments, suitable financing options for infrastructure development will vary. Governments and multilateral agencies will remain important providers of funding, but the role of private financing looks set to grow. This underscores the need to put more effort into improving transparency and governance as well as enhancing cooperation in harmonising capital market standards and facilitating cross-border flows. [more]

The recently announced plans for a free trade agreement between China and the EU are momentous. China is the EU’s No. 1 supplier of goods and its third-largest export market. In turn, the EU is China’s largest trading partner. Going by current trends, EU-China annual bilateral trade could grow close to 1.5 times in a decade’s time. Not only goods but also services trade has large potential to grow. Chinese investment into the EU is still in its infancy but is likely to increase and become more broad-based, covering a wider range of industries and countries across Europe. New dynamism is expected from a bilateral investment agreement currently in negotiation and rising interest of Chinese investors in European companies, as shown by our compilation of Chinese M&A deals vis-à-vis the EU and Germany. Plenty of headroom exists for greater use of RMB in bilateral trade and investment relations. A note of caution concerns the risk of trade disputes which is unlikely to be removed in the near term. [more]

ASEAN, a bloc of 10 nations with an aggregate economic size of USD 2.3 tr, is preparing to go through profound changes. Already today, ASEAN is the 3rd pillar of growth in Asia in addition to China and India, with average GDP growth over the past 15 years at around 6% p.a. The region’s prospects will be much enhanced by an ambitious integration effort which seeks to achieve a single market and production base. The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)'s envisaged launch at the end of 2015 will be a potential game changer for ASEAN. [more]

We expect the Asian frontier markets (AFMs) to be on a solid and accelerating growth path over the next five years, with real GDP growth potentially rising to 7-8% annually. All of the countries are expected to be members of the WTO by 2017. Trade at the regional and international levels is expected to deepen and drive growth in these countries. There are some risks to this constructive outlook such as natural catastrophes, political instability or even risks that could arise from rising interdependence with the global economy. Beyond these immediate risks, there are important challenges to tackle such as poverty reduction and protection of the environment and the national heritage. Improvement on these fronts will help the AFMs maintain their attraction for FDI flows. Finally, economic reform will need a more commercially-driven banking sector and financial markets, as well as a robust regulatory regime. [more]

Chinese assets and liabilities have been steadily increasing from 2004 to 2010, congruent with China's economic ascendency and trade integration with the rest of the world. China today is already the world’s second largest net creditor, which, in theory, is an anomaly for a developing country. We look at possible scenarios for China and the world economy until 2015. In all of them, China will continue to accumulate FX reserves, and reserve assets will remain the largest component of China’s overall foreign assets, but the pace of accumulation is likely to slow down. The financial integration of China into the rest of the world will really take off only when portfolio investments are liberalised more boldly compared to the “stop-and-go” approach of recent years. [more]

Our China-India Chartbook presents a graphical overview of economic and social indicators in both China and India and highlights the changes that have taken place over the past decade. Both countries have experienced strong growth, which has led to improvements in health, education, and poverty reduction. While they emerged unscathed from the global financial crisis, they still face macroeconomic challenges such as containing inflation pressures and reducing external imbalances. Progress has been made on improving infrastructure and strengthening banking sectors. The next decade will likely see both economies continuing to grow strongly, with the sources of growth more evenly balanced between domestic and external demand. [more]

The goal of this study is to shed light on Chinese consumers’ evolution and behaviour as well as on the composition of this heterogeneous group. China’s urban consumers are growing in number and in spending power, and their outlook is promising. On the other hand, the potential of rural consumers must still be developed, and their income gap with the urban counterparts narrowed. Policies to support income growth, increase disposable income, and help households grow their wealth are starting to be implemented. These policies, coupled with China’s attractive long-term growth prospects, bode well for China’s consumers, who in a few decades could turn out to be the world economy’s key growth driver. [more]

Over the past months hopes have been rising that the Asian consumer will replace the US as “world consumer of last resort”. Although this seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, the emergence of a large and dynamic middle class raises Asia’s profile as an attractive market. In this overview report we take a look at how the region’s middle class has developed and how the global economic crisis is likely to affect it, and discuss some definition problems associated with the at first sight straight-forward concept of "middle class". [more]