Asean

Australia has granted “major project status” to an ambitious A$22 billion ($21.6 billion) plan to export solar power to Southeast Asia via undersea cable.

The Southeast Asian region is only gradually coming to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, but it does not have the luxury of postponing action to tackle the longer-term dangers that it faces.

“The outbreak of Covid-19 accelerated and amplified consumers’ reliance on e-commerce and created even larger potential opportunities in [Southeast Asia],” observes Johnny Chou, BEST Inc’s founder, chairman and CEO.

Although some 88% of these businesses have lowered their revenue expectations in 2020, almost half of them (44%) still plan to increase their overall technology budget.

As the world becomes more protectionist and inward-looking, ASEAN should come together economically and work towards digital integration and sustainability.

The U.S. security presence “remains vital to the Asia-Pacific region,” and China would be unable to take over that role in Southeast Asia even with its increasing military might, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

“Those [firms] without a digital core will be the ones that will be left behind.” - P Ramakrishna, CEO of CIO Academy Asia

Nearly the entire world is now in some state of lockdown, in various names and forms. The rationale is to break the chain of infection by reducing human interaction, ideally to near zero.

“The worst is yet to come,” Nomura says.