Chart of the Week │ May 20, 2026
Intra-RCEP Digitally-Deliverable Service Exports Are Led by Business and ICT Services
Intra-RCEP exports of digitally-deliverable services (DDS) have demonstrated remarkable resilience, with a compound annual growth rate of 9% from 2017 to 2024, outpacing non-DDS sectors, despite of trade wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical tensions.
Featured Research
Book Launch│Nepal Competitiveness Index 2026: Supporting Nepal’s Journey Towards Effective Planning
Summary : The Nepal Competitiveness Index (NCI) 2026 is the fourth edition of this joint research initiative by the Nepal Institute for Policy Research (NIPoRe) and the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI). NCI ranks Nepal’s seven provinces across 64 indicators grouped…
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Delivering on the RCEP Promise: Priorities for the 2027 Review
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a core pillar of Asia’s institutional architecture and a stabilising force amid rising geopolitical uncertainty, but its gains remain modest and uneven. It continues to reinforce existing linkages more than it creates new…
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A Simple School Meal, a Big Result: How India’s Midday Meal Scheme Reduced Child Labour
Can a school meal programme also reduce child labour? New research from the Asia Competitiveness Institute finds that India’s Midday Meal Scheme substantially reduced child labour among 10- to 15-year-olds in upper primary grades. This matters especially in economies that depend heavily on informal and agricultural work,…
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Unlocking RCEP Region’s Technological Landscape Through Patent Data
Like many other Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is often celebrated for reducing barriers to economic integration. Yet beyond these visible gains, technology—an invisible engine driving industrial upgrading—has also become increasingly borderless through high-tech goods…
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Mapping ASEAN’s Clean Power: What 218 Projects Say About Cost Competitiveness
On 16 March 2026, ACI hosted a webinar themed “Mapping ASEAN’s Clean Power: What 218 Projects Say About Cost Competitiveness”. This webinar was organised as part of the ACI Data and Policy Analytics Seminar Series. The webinar explored the cost-competitiveness…
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Human Capital Divide in Indonesia: Conversion Gaps and Policy Options
Indonesia’s education reforms have improved learning outcomes nationally, but not all provinces have progressed at the same pace. ACI’s webinar, held on 12 March 2026, “Human Capital Divide in Indonesia: Conversion Gaps and Policy Options,” focused on this gap between…
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From Innovation to Diffusion: Cross-Regional Influence of the US-Singapore FTA
Two decades on, the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) has proven to be more than a bilateral deal. It was Washington’s first FTA with an Asia-Pacific partner and remains its only one with an ASEAN member. At the time, leaders…
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Do Export Tax Rebates Boost Exports in India? Evidence from RoDTEP
ACI’s latest research on India’s newest export tax rebate scheme, the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP), shows that eligible firms increased their export intensity as applicable rebate rates rose. But the response was uneven, with export…
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One Size Doesn’t Fit All: The Power of Local Context in Policy Design
Why do some public policies succeed while others falter? New research from the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI) reveals a critical factor: context-awareness. The study finds that policies designed with a deep understanding of local contexts achieve significant positive results, whereas…
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ACI Perspectives 