The Knowledge to Decide

The establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 was a major milestone in the region’s economic integration. With a GDP of USD2.6 trillion and 600 million people, the AEC is Asia’s third largest economy and the seventh largest in the world. What is the AEC score card thus far? Leon Perera, Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, shared his insights in China Daily – Asia Weekly. AEC’s Blueprint 2025 envisions in achieving a highly integrated and competitive regional economy with enhanced connectivity to improve market access for ASEAN companies to sell goods and services. However, the past year has seen missed opportunities to accelerate progress for cross-border investment between ASEAN countries, speeding up the harmonization progress of non-tariff barriers as well as integrating a competition policy across ASEAN. Nevertheless, the AEC is making some progress. In time, it is well-placed to improve market access and provide the ASEAN groupin

Singapore celebrated its golden jubilee as one of the world’s developed economies. Following the death of founding father Lee Kuan Yew and the current global economic headwinds, can economic momentum be maintained? Japnit Singh, Senior Director, Singapore and India, of Spire Research and Consulting shared his insights in China Daily – Asia Weekly. Singapore has successfully built a strong foundation for its economy with human development indicators such as education, life expectancy and per capita income on a positive high. Singh cautioned that the nation needs to focus in order to take bold and productive political decisions without becoming complacent. Moreover, it would be interesting to see if the next generation of political leaders would take difficult decisions with the same firmness and transparency as the founding fathers have done in the past. Singapore’s GINI coefficient – calculated as the ratio of income of the top 20% of population with the bottom 20% –

Japanese women are increasingly pursuing professional aspirations but are being held back by rigid social norms that discourage mothers from working. However, as Japan realizes the important contribution that women can make to employment and innovation, social norms may be slowly changing. Is there a pathway to gender parity in Japan’s workplace? Leon Perera, Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, shared his thoughts on Huffington Post, Japan – a globally acclaimed news portal. Only 10% of senior managerial positions are occupied by women, which is low when compared to comparable figures for the United States (42%) and France (38%). As in many other countries, women in Japan are often made to choose between their professional and personal lives in a way that men are not. Work-life balance is hard to sustain when they single-handedly take care of household responsibilities. Perera opined that Japan needs to overcome its societal norms about gender so as to b

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) aims for regional economic integration this year. What implications will it have on the burgeoning ASEAN business environment? Leon Perera, Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, shared his insights in the Asian version of Japan’s Nikkei newspaper. As the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) countries liberalize trade in line with AEC goals, the ASEAN economic landscape is changing. Many of the goals of the AEC in terms of liberalizing trade in goods have already been realized ahead of the 2015 deadline. This has helped to build up a positive momentum for the AEC project. This will also stimulate some restructuring of manufacturing activities in the region going forward. However the progress towards AEC goals in terms of freeing up human resources and services is lagging. It will take some years after 2015 before these are realized, due to the greater sensitivity of changes in these spheres. However, Perera ca

As a global manufacturing hub, China is now trying to break out into new, higher value-added product development. Is “Made in China” ready for a brand facelift? Spire Research and Consulting shared its insights, published on the US Consumer Electronics Association’s blog. China is emerging as the largest market for tablets and personal computers. Home-grown Chinese brands such as a Lenovo and Huawei have successfully gone global. Some of these Chinese brands are breaking the old ‘Made in China’ image and taking it to a whole new level. What factors bred this success? Several entrepreneurs have built distinct brand images to achieve global success based upon the founder’s vision of the future. Examples include Jack Ma of Alibaba Group, Robin Li of Baidu and Pony Ma of Tencent. Their zeal for excellence and innovation, as well as their colourful personalities, have helped them gain mindshare among consumers, both local and global. Many Chinese firms have proven to be experts