New association in Singapore to focus on developing talent, industry standards in sustainable finance

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

Meanwhile, the SSFA can take the lead in developing industry best practices in areas such as the trading of carbon credits and transition finance.

Having clear and credible standards can mitigate the risk of greenwashing and provide more confidence for capital to be channelled to legitimate green and transition activities, said Mr Chia.

In the area of financing, the association can bring together different players, not just those in the financial space, to “identify more integrated approaches” to address the barriers in financing.

For one, it can combine financing solutions from different asset classes, including risk mitigation tools, to improve the bankability of projects. Mr Chia noted that this applies not only in climate mitigation, but also in financing less bankable projects related to climate adaptation and biodiversity preservation.

In a press release, the SSFA said it will work towards driving the development of a sustainable finance ecosystem and promote best sustainable finance practices in Singapore.

It will also facilitate collaboration between the financial and non-financial sectors for sustainable finance to support the low carbon transition and sustainable economic growth of Singapore and the region, among other objectives.

The SSFA will be co-chaired in its first term by BlackRock’s Singapore country head and regional head of Southeast Asia Deborah Ho and HSBC Singapore’s chief executive officer Wong Kee Joo.

The executive committee also includes 19 other members, comprising MAS’ chief sustainability officer Gillian Tan, Association of Banks in Singapore’s director Ong-Ang Ai Boon, C-suite representatives from financial firms, non-financial sector corporates and academia. 

At the first executive committee meeting on Wednesday, the SSFA said it has formalised its governance structure and laid out its workplan for the year. 

This includes the establishment of workstreams to focus on five key areas, namely carbon markets, transition finance, blended finance, natural capital and biodiversity, and taxonomy.

Continue Reading

Mavcap invests in Vynn Capital’s SEA focused mobility and supply chain fund

By:
On:
In: Technology

Reflects continuous commitment to back local funds,  nurture pioneering startups
Sime Darby, AEI Capital earlier investors, enabling industry to invest into tech companies

Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (MAVCAP), Malaysia’s largest venture capital firm, announced that it is investing as a limited partner (LP) in Vynn Capital’s latest Mobility and Supply Chain Fund….Continue Reading

Save a seat for the Global South – Asia Times

By:
On:
In: Asia

Countries in the Global South are becoming increasingly important actors on the global stage. 

While the term “Global South” is vague — and some have argued for abolishing it — it is used here to mean the larger and richer developing nations. The demands made by the Global South have created political and economic shifts that the West will need to adapt to.

These countries have become more powerful due to their economic growth. With respect to GDP in purchasing power parity-adjusted terms, India is the third largest economy globally, while Indonesia is seventh and Brazil is eighth. 

Meanwhile, the G7’s share of global GDP has fallen from 65%-44% over the last 50 years due in part to China’s rise but also to the rise of the Global South.

The Global South is using its power by trying to exert agency in international economic and political affairs. One manifestation is the call for “active non-alignment” between the United States and China. 

This is not the non-alignment of the 20th century, but one that shifts alliances depending on the issue at stake. A recent example is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

While most developing countries disapprove of the invasion, they are unwilling to participate in sanctions despite the West’s urging. Another example is Southeast Asia balancing close economic relations with China against security relations with the United States.

Yet there are obstacles to the Global South assuming a substantially greater international political role. The interests of individual countries are quite heterogeneous, varying by geographical location, size, natural resource endowment and development level. 

For instance, China’s neighbors in Southeast Asia are in quite a different situation than Latin American countries in the US sphere of influence. Likewise, a giant like India is unlikely to share the same world outlook as a smaller Chile. Natural resource exporters have different interests than exporters of industrial goods.

There is also a lack of leadership within the Global South. While we might assume that the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and six other recently added members — would form the leadership core, the presence of China complicates that assumption. 

If the Global South seeks to locate itself between the United States and China and draw resources from both, having China as part of the leadership is a contradiction. Until an “indigenous” leadership emerges, the Global South cannot effectively engage in active non-alignment.

The implications of a substantially more powerful Global South can be understood by looking at the demands that come from organizations associated with the Global South, including BRICS and the Group of 77. 

Currently, the Global South is demanding a greater role in existing international institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the UN Security Council, as well as greater equality in the division of international resources. The issue on the international agenda at the moment is the demand for a “loss and damage” fund as part of the climate negotiations.

Overall, a larger international role for the Global South is likely to make decision-making more difficult, as already seen in the World Trade Organization and the UN General Assembly. It also seems likely that a greater role for the Global South would mean a greater role for China given its successful courtship of many Global South countries.

From the view of long-run stability, the West should support the current demands to give the Global South a stake in the current world system. 

The West should support a greater role for the Global South in international financial institutions and the UN. One step in that direction was the creation of the G20, but more permanent participation is called for. The quid pro quo of greater participation could be an agreement on an agenda for the coming decade and rules of operation for international organizations. 

The West should initiate steps on resource sharing. The creation, if not yet the funding, of the loss and damage fund is such a step. Others that have been called for include additional rounds of Special Drawing Rights emissions and more financial support towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

While these steps would be helpful in terms of global stability, the West also has an interest in backing the Global South to boost support for democracy. China has leveraged its growing role as the main trading partner and an important source of finance for many developing countries to promote its authoritarian political system. 

Thus, the West should make a serious effort to support the Global South to safeguard its political and economic interests.

Barbara Stallings is Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University (USA) and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Schwarzman Scholars Program, Tsinghua University (PRC).

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

Continue Reading

Commentary: Thailand’s Kra land bridge – a white elephant comes charging back

By:
On:
In: Asia

Srettha has revitalised the idea with gusto, recycling arguments long trotted out by proponents of the Kra Canal.

First, by bypassing the increasingly congested Straits of Malacca, shipping companies will save three to four days sailing time, thereby reducing transportation costs by 15 per cent.

Second, construction of the land bridge will provide a 1.3 trillion baht (US$370 billion) boon to the economy, raising economic growth by 1.5 per cent and providing jobs for 280,000 workers. It would particularly benefit the economy in the south where the ruling coalition parties fared poorly in the May 2023 general election.

Third, the land bridge would place Thailand at the heart of Southeast Asia’s supply chains.

COST OF BYPASSING STRAITS OF MALACCA

As with the Kra canal, critics of the land bridge have called into question the project’s economic viability. Bypassing the Malacca Straits may well reduce sailing times, they argue, but off-loading goods at one end, transporting them to the other end, and then re-loading them onto other ships could take just as long as sailing through the straits and would actually increase transportation costs.

In addition, the land bridge would have a negative impact on the environment, hurting southern Thailand’s tourism and fishing industries. Moreover, geopolitically, ownership of the land bridge might suck Thailand into the vortex of US-China competition, especially if Beijing was to fund its construction.

Undeterred by these arguments, Srettha has said he is determined to see the project through and has even proposed a timeline. Construction companies would bid for contracts in mid-2025 with construction slated to begin later the same year and completed by 2030, at a total cost of around US$30 billion.

Continue Reading

The Singaporean artist who once turned an HDB staircase gold continues to highlight social issues through her art

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

In 2023, Dia felt she had established enough of a name for herself and was ready to become a full-time artist. 

That year, Dia was nominated for an art residency programme under NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The programme, called Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union, facilitates artistic and cultural exchange between Southeast Asia and Europe. 

Dia was one of three Southeast Asian artists selected and she spent three months in the Netherlands.  

“There, I made a lot of connections and though I wasn’t local, it felt as if I could fit in,” she said. “They were welcoming, open to sharing about their art, and passionate about the industry – I’d love to bring that culture here in Singapore.”

In the Netherlands, Dia also learned to adopt more creative and artistic ways to highlight issues such as race relations and post-colonialism in her work. 

One way was through the use of sound, which is a huge part of her art. Take her multimedia artwork, Sap Script, which is showing at Singapore Art Week in 2024. 

The work focuses on the experiences of workers in rubber plantations in Melaka, Malaysia, and digitally combines the surrounding atmospheric sounds of the plantations with the distant and indistinguishable voices of the workers. It allows the viewer – and listener – to immerse themselves in the unfamiliar experience of being on the plantation themselves.

“Working with sound brings the viewer into the experience and history of the art piece,” she said. “I wanted to let people know that sometimes you can’t see things even when they’re in front of you, so you’ve got to engage the rest of your senses, too.”

Her work has also allowed her to push the boundaries of what it means to be an artist in Singapore. 

Continue Reading

Indonesia presidential hopefuls pledge to boost troubled anti-graft agency

By:
On:
In: Asia

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s presidential candidates have pledged to strengthen the government’s anti-corruption agency, laying out their plans ahead of the country’s Feb 14 election, to counter pervasive graft in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. The candidates’ promises, made at a dialogue late on Wednesday (Jan 17), come as experts bemoan a slowdownContinue Reading

Handout scheme cannot be rolled out by May as targeted

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

The digital wallet scheme faces delay in its May rollout, with no new timeline given

PUBLISHED : 17 Jan 2024 at 13:08

Handout scheme cannot be rolled out by May as targeted
People purchase grocery items at a fresh market in Rangsit area, Bangkok. (Photo: Nutthawat Wicheanbut)

The Pheu Thai-led government’s controversial 500-billion-baht (US$14.3-billion) “digital wallet” handout scheme, aimed at reviving a sluggish economy, cannot be rolled out in May as originally targeted, Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said on Wednesday.

The delay will be a setback for Prime Minister and Finance Minister Srettha Thavisin’s coalition government, which has been touting the signature handout policy as essential in boosting an economy that is lagging regional peers.

The scheme would give 10,000 baht (around $285) to 50 million Thais to spend in their local communities.

“Today, looking at the timeframe, it’s unlikely for May,” Mr Julapun said, without specifying a new timeline.

Deputy Finance Minister and Pheu Thai Party MP Julapun Amornvivat. (Photo: Chanat Katanyu)

The programme, originally slated for February and delayed to May, would have allowed Thais to receive funds via a mobile application.

The digital wallet was a key election campaign policy of the ruling Pheu Thai Party. It is core among a raft of stimulus measures that Mr Srettha’s government has promised for Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy, including debt suspension for farmers and a minimum wage hike.

The money from the digital wallet scheme can only be used for food and consumer goods. It cannot be used to buy online goods, cigarettes or liquor, cash vouchers and valuables like diamonds, gems or gold. 

It also cannot be used to pay off debts or cover water or electricity bills, fuel, natural gas or tuition fees. The money must be spent in the district where the recipient’s home is registered.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has recently warned the government of possible illegalities in its planned digital wallet handout.

Continue Reading

1337 Ventures announces new cohort of Alpha Startups for women in Southeast Asia

By:
On:
In: Technology

Winners will receive up to US$10,600 in equity funding
Aims to empower women entrepreneurs in Malaysia & Southeast Asia

1337 Ventures’ Alpha Startups™ is launching a new cohort exclusively for women-led startups. In a statement, the pre-accelerator programme said this initiative, in collaboration with Freda Liu, a respected Malaysian author, broadcast journalist, and…Continue Reading

China gets banned Nvidia AI chips via gray markets

By:
On:
In: Asia

Evidence has accumulated that, despite the United States’ export controls, China’s military-related firms, research centers and universities can still acquire Nvidia’s high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chip. Technology experts say the Biden administration has failed so far to stop small distributors from reselling and smuggling the chips into the Chinese underground markets.

The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) banned the export of the A100 and H100 chips to China in October 2022 and the export of the A800 and H800 chips to the country last October, but results have not been satisfactory.

One early study, from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington-based non-profit organization, said last October that thousands of controlled AI chips could have been smuggled into China in 2023. By 1925, it said, the figure might grow to as many as 12,500 – or even hundreds of thousands – per year.

Some Chinese firms have set up multiple shell companies in third countries, used them to place small orders with AI chip distributors and diverted those chips to China, it said – and some Chinese cloud providers placed bulk orders for AI chips for their overseas data centers and redirected some of these chips to China. 

The CNAS suggested that the BIS pilot an AI chip registry and inspection program, as well as end-user verification programs in Southeast Asia. It said AI chip exporters should be required to carry out rigorous customer screening targeted at key vectors for large-scale smuggling.

Now a document obtained by Reuters shows that Chinese state entities have procured Nvidia’s A100 chips in more than 100 tenders since October 2022 and A800 chips in dozens of tenders since last October. 

Among the buyers, a Wuxi-based People’s Liberation Army entity purchased three A100 chips last October and one H100 chip this month. The Harbin Institute of Technology, one of China’s top defense-research universities, purchased six A100 chips in May 2023. The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, based in Chengdu, bought one A100 in December 2022.

Reuters reported that these Chinese entities’ chip suppliers are not retailers approved by Nvidia. In other words, some third parties may have resold Nvidia’s AI chips to China. Nvidia’s spokesperson told Reuters that the company will take immediate and appropriate action if it knows that a customer has made an unlawful resale to third parties.

AI chip registry system

Violations are hidden in plain sight, commentators say.

An IT writer using the pen name “Chenyi” says in an article published by Xinchao IC last November that it’s not difficult to see distributors, who claim to have A100 and H100 chips for sale, over social media and e-commerce platforms in China.

“These sellers mostly come from southern China and have their secret supply channels. They can send AI chips from overseas to mainland China but they don’t provide any post-sale services,” Chenyi says. 

He says the A100 was priced at about 40,000 yuan (US$5,600) in China in February 2023 but the price surged to 250,000 yuan in May. 

He says sellers then started speculating in the H100, which is several times faster than the A100 in AI training, in June. He says the H100 is now sold at about 320,000 yuan each, a 50% premium over the official price of US$30,000.

In the US, technology giants including Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are also facing insufficient supplies of the H100.  

Smuggling channels 

The US Commerce Department as early as 2021 had classified Hong Kong as one of its “foreign adversaries,” alongside mainland China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. It means that products that are subject to the US export controls cannot be shipped directly to Hong Kong, but must go through third countries to evade the controls.

A Hubei-based columnist published an article with the title “How to obtain A100 chips in China?” last July.

He says most of the A100 chips came from smuggling channels in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong to mainland China. He says some sellers would require buyers to complete their deals in Hong Kong. 

“As Nvidia will not provide any warranty and post-sale services for the banned A100 display card in China, anyone who bought it will suffer from a huge loss if it has problems,” the writer says. “There is no way that a faulty A100 can be shipped overseas for repair or be protected by an official warranty scheme.”

Last April, Hong Kong Customs said it seized 70 pieces of unmanifested high-value computer display cards, plus about 280 kilograms of unmanifested live lobsters, in an anti-smuggling operation at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong Port. It said the products had a total estimated market value of about HK$600,000 (US$76,669). Two men were arrested. 

Taiwanese media said the seized display cards look like Quadro K2200 cards, which were launched by Nvidia in 2014 and are not subject to US export controls.

US Authorities have vowed to close loopholes in the export restrictions and have tried to prevent overseas Chinese firms from having access to Nvidia’s high-end chips. But until now, they have not suggested any effective solutions that can stop the illegal resale and smuggling of high-end chips to China.  

Read: US-China chip war may extend to legacy chips

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

Continue Reading