The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) concluded in Washington, DC earlier this month. The summit series was the brainchild of United States President Barack Obama, who first mooted the idea in 2009. Results have been mixed and it is unclear if the nuclear security...
Myanmar changed more than its government last week. For the first time in more than 50 years, a democratic and non-military President is in office. An historic new chapter begins for the country that some have dubbed Asia’s “last frontier economy”. The focus is understandably on...
ASEAN Finance Ministers and central bankers have wrapped up the 20th ASEAN Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Laos. Plans and deadlines to develop ASEAN’s post-2015 financial integration featured prominently on the agenda. As ASEAN takes steps to realise its post-2015 ASEAN Community vision, it is important for...
Signs warn that haze may soon return to the skies of South-east Asia. Fires have already broken out in Riau and a state of emergency declared earlier this month. Yet, while some fear the worst, the declaration shows the urgent attention that the Indonesian President...
SIIA Chairman Simon Tay was quoted in a Straits Times feature by Nirmal Ghosh, the Straits Times' Indochina Bureau Chief, on how Asian countries are responding to the rhetoric of Republican front runner Donald Trump. The article appeared in The Sunday Times and in The Nation on 20 March...
March 2016 | A number of our corporate members have asked my views about Indonesia. I have been there recently and met privately with Pak Teten Masduki, Chief of Staff to President Jokowi, as well as a number of political analysts. These were private and informal...
Blue skies breed amnesia. With the clear skies, many may now struggle to recall the urgency and anger over the smoke haze pollution in the region. Last year was one of the worst on historical record for fires and it was barely six months ago that...
Last week, the SIIA hosted Dr. Logan Wright, Director at the Rhodium Group, who leads the firm’s China Markets Research (CMR) work. Dr. Wright spoke about Chinese exchange rate policy and capital outflows from China at an evening seminar on 17 Feb 2016, and the...
February 2016 | A number of our corporate members have asked my views about Myanmar. I have been there recently and met privately with advisors of the present government as well as from the National League of Democracy, and senior management of leading foreign and Myanmar...
Obama Staking Asia Policy On ASEAN Sunnylands Summit [Forbes, 14 Feb 2016] "Diplomatically, symbolically, this is putting ASEAN—10 medium-size and smaller countries—virtually on par on China, which is a great acknowledgement of the distance ASEAN has come since past years," said SIIA Chairman Simon Tay. For the...