Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
Indonesia’s overarching goal to expand its basic digital infrastructure first emerged in the 1990s, through the idea of the Palapa Ring project. The project aimed to provide internet access to the entirety of the 34 provinces in the archipelagic nation and was completed recently in 2019. In 2014, the percentage of households in Indonesia with […]
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“Digital” The new byword and frontier in economic growth but despite all the buzz and attention, what does it actually mean for the economies of ASEAN? ACI’s recent webinar titled “Challenges and Opportunities in ASEAN’s Digital Economy” hosted on Friday, 24 Sep 2021 tackled this issue in depth. Speakers from ACI and Mr Konesh Kochhal, […]
Read MoreSummary In Asia, where there is a clear recognition of the benefits of broad digital access, we see that there are signs of rapid technological leapfrogging in Infocomm infrastructure. The Service Penetration Rate of at least LTE/WiMAX mobile networks in Asia has ballooned rapidly in the brief period between 2015 – 2019. In most of […]
Read MoreSummary As souring relations between the United States and China continue to take center stage and grab all the geopolitical headlines, attention on ASEAN has increased. The region has become subject to a geopolitical tug of war, and despite its protestations, are being increasingly pressured to choose between the two superpowers. This situation makes research […]
Read MoreNotes: Effective applied tariff is sourced from TRAINS Database through WITS and is UNCTAD adjusted. GDP per capita is computed using output-side real GDP at current PPPs (in mil. 2017US$) and Population (in millions) from PWT10.0. Summary This week’s chart displays the negative correlation between a country’s per capita income and the level of import […]
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2020 has proven to be a tumultuous year for the world. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as a highly internationalized region, is naturally not spared from events. At the time of writing, vaccines for the virus have begun to be distributed worldwide in the hopes of containing the virus. Meanwhile, new and more […]
Read MoreSummary Payment behavior is heterogeneous across Southeast Asia, reflecting the region’s diverse and multifaceted population and levels of financial development. This week’s chart dives into payment behavior of individuals across select ASEAN member states. The data is sourced from the Global Findex Database (2017), which is the world’s most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, […]
Read MoreSummary In the last decade, Indonesia’s tertiary sector has continued to grow, further surpassing the primary and secondary sector. This week’s chart illustrates Indonesia’s economic composition in terms of the percentage of the three sectors in the GDP value-added, as well as the annual growth rate of the Information and Communication industry. The chart shows that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the tertiary sector continues to grow and has hit a new record in 2020, […]
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It has been over a year since the onset of COVID-19. Governments around the world have undergone an unprecedented challenge to contain the pandemic while minimizing the economic costs. Policy responses have been vastly different across countries, from strict quarantine measures in China, to minimal economic intervention in Sweden. Despite varying degrees of stringency, these […]
Read MoreSummary Currently ASEAN MSMEs have a relatively low level of digital tools usage. There are several factors attributing to this, with the main reason being the digital divide between large and small firms. According to OECD, usage of advanced digital tools differs between sizes of firms even amongst advanced economies. This is only exacerbated in […]
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