An endless line of water that starts from a shallow stream, grows into a big river, and then flows into the ocean. That’s how Vietnam’s former deputy prime minister, Vu Khoan, described the progress made by Vietnam and South Korea in 2012, as they celebrated the 20th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations. The development of Vietnam–South Korea relations over the past two decades has been a ‘the Pacific miracle’.
While a stalemate on a restructuring of Greek debt has caused uncertainty in Europe, negative economic indicators in the U.S. are causing many analysts to rethink their optimistic view of the world’s largest economy.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has eased its policy stance, cutting interest rates before it was expected to do so. This generated unnecessary controversy from the media and market analysts, who alleged political pressure lowered policy rates. But the case for a cut and change to a more accommodative stance had become compelling. The fall in trend rates of inflation required this cut.
A pressing policy question facing Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders at their summit in April 2015 and beyond is whether the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) can be sustained without more effective institutions. This article explores the link between achieving the AEC agenda and institutional effectiveness. To remedy the implementation gridlock, it proposes reforms to the leadership and the technical level of ASEAN bodies, prioritization of new institutions, an effective monitoring mechanism, and an empowered ASEAN Secretariat.
After decades of the fastest economic growth in the world, China’s economy has started to slow down. This is perhaps inevitable, given an average annual growth rate of around 10% was sustained for almost thirty years following the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Temasek, one of Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), along with the Government Investment Corporation (GIC). Set up in 1974 as part of the newly independent city-state’s nation- building effort, Temasek has evolved from a sleepy holding company shepherding an initial portfolio of 35 inherited government-linked companies (GLCs) to a long-term, return-seeking investor with both wealth-management and development mandates.
India’s new government faces challenges for economic revival, but it also has a golden opportunity to build consensus for strong structural and fiscal reform.
Restoring growth is paramount. In the last two years, growth has slipped below 5 percent, the lowest in a decade. ‘Execution bottlenecks’ in large infrastructure projects and massive declines in private and public investments are the causes. But economic growth has been one of the stimulants of India’s massive reduction in absolute poverty. It is essential to bring it back.
The US dollar is mixed. It is mostly softer against the euro and sterling, paring yesterday’s late gains. It is firmer against the yen and Swiss franc amid cross rate developments.
As the hard talks on Greece’s bailout start again, there is no time to lose. A compromise is possible.
Before the weekend, Euro group president Jeroen Djisselbloem said that “Greece wants a lot but has very little money to do that. That’s really a problem.”
Unfortunately, Brussels is not exactly in a winning position either.
The Chinese economy, one might think if one took most of the commentary on it seriously, is on a hiding to nowhere good. The growth rate is falling. Manufacturing is suffering over-capacity. The real estate bubble has burst, or it is about to. The opportunity for productive infrastructure investment is running out. If you are sitting in an economy like Australia, which is dropping off the edge of the Chinese-driven commodity boom over the past decade or so, there might not seem to be much cheer in the Chinese economic outlook.
