In mid-April, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its Diplomatic Bluebook 2023, its most important guidebook on international affairs. Japan’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, wrote the foreword, which begins: “The world is now at a turning point in history.” This phrase is key to understanding the Japanese approach to the war in Ukraine. Hours after […]Continue Reading
OCBC said its Eco-Care car loans accounted for nearly one in 10 car loans last year.Continue Reading
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s and Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko’s participation at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings last week in Washington in effect returned the multilateral organizations to their Bretton Woods origins, the 1944 agreement signed at a New Hampshire resort to rebuild the world economy after World War II. The International Monetary […]Continue Reading
Political tensions between Beijing and Washington have increased again after the Biden administration sanctioned 12 Chinese firms for shipments to Russia and two others for supplying chemicals illicitly used in Mexico to produce the opioid drug fentanyl for the US market. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) last week amended […]Continue Reading
SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has not instructed banks to “keep quiet” about the origins of wealth inflows into Singapore, the Private Banking Industry Group (PBIG) said on Friday (Apr 14). The industry group’s statement was issued following a Financial Times article that said MAS had issued aContinue Reading
SINGAPORE – Singapore’s central bank defied expectations that it would tighten monetary policy for a sixth time since October 2021, announcing on Friday (April 14) that it would keep its policy settings unchanged despite stubborn price pressures at a 14-year-high and amid advance estimates that first-quarter economic growth fell well short of expectations. The bellwether […]Continue Reading
WASHINGTON: Asian central banks may need to keep monetary policy “tighter for longer” to combat still substantial inflation risks, senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official Krishna Srinivasan said on Thursday (Apr 13). Some central banks in the region, such as Australia’s, have begun pausing interest rate hikes as they sawContinue Reading
Boat-dwelling members of this ethnic minority are on the front lines of ecological collapse. Adaptation to life off the riverbank has brought its own challenges
The post Cambodia’s Cham fishers look for new lives on land appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.
“DAVID AND GOLIATH” It is the latest in a series of delays to the project, first proposed to the Thai government back in 2010. The junta led by Prayut pushed closer ties with China, leading some to fear that Thailand was abandoning its policy of trying to balance relations withContinue Reading
If you think of the global economy as a giant chess match, China’s Xi Jinping now seems a few moves ahead of US President Joe Biden. That’s a plausible take on China’s leader hosting French President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing in recent days. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk was in China to double down on the […]Continue Reading