In working to ink the deal, the UK and Singapore must keep in mind the wider Southeast Asia opportunity; the benefit to both countries is too big to miss.
Singapore and the UK this week kicked off negotiations to open up a digital economy, building on the free trade agreement signed late last year. If an agreement is signed, all sizes of businesses from both countries look set to benefit from increased clarity and reduced costs associated with seamless digital transactions.
This is a significant and ambitious chapter in developing “the new economy”, the first of its kind between an Asian and European country — and one which will undoubtedly mark progress for inter-country trade. Yet it also has the potential to have much widerreaching implications: the two FinTech hubs could form a framework that could be replicated across Southeast Asia.
