Asia Economy



Decades of growth in trade and foreign investment have seen global economies become more interconnected than ever before. This trend has been reinforced by the steady liberalisation of international trade and investment, at the bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral levels. National economic specialisations, and regional economic...



Elections in June 2016 saw President Rodrigo Duterte assume his six-year term as the 16th president of the Republic of the Philippines. President Duterte, who served for seven terms and over 22 years as mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, won the May 2016 elections by a wide margin, ushering in a period of widespread...



Hailed by Chinese President Xi Jinping as “the project of the century”, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promises to radically transform a vast swathe of the world’s trade and transport infrastructure. In doing so, it may also have a marked impact on the way Asia does business with the world and vice versa.



Spanning more than 300,000 sq km, the Republic of the Philippines has a complex history marked by successive waves of migration and periods of colonisation and occupation. Located south of Taiwan and east of Vietnam, and bounded to the west by the South China Sea and to the south by the Sulu and Celebes Seas, the Philippines is...

High levels of public expenditure and rapid industrial expansion supported a long period of robust macroeconomic growth, averaging more than 6% between 2008 and 2014, as the country embarked on a period of post-war reconstruction. With this boom moderating in recent years, a series of ambitious reforms and corrective monetary and fiscal...

The country benefits from its strategic geographic position along a critical Indian Ocean trade route, strong base of industrial and cash crop exports, and rapidly expanding non-agricultural economy. High levels of public expenditure and rapid industrial expansion supported recent robust macroeconomic growth, averaging more than 6% between 2008 and...