“The Asean region will soon become a new base for China’s manufacturing hub as China seeks to reorient the Asia Pacific’s supply chain,” said Arm Tungnirun, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn Unversity’s faculty of law and author of the book China 5.0.

Arm was speaking yesterday at an event titled “’Where China’s Belt and Road Initiative meets Indo-Pacific”, which was organised by the Office of Academic Resources and the Asean Studies Centre of Chulalongkorn University.

As the US-China trade conflict drags on, he said, its most significant impact has been the realignment of the global supply chain towards the Asean region. This is particularly so for foreign companies based in China and Chinese companies looking to invest abroad. The BRI has so far focused on infrastructure construction in developing countries throughout the world. This creates a fruitful business environment for Chinese firms that are looking to invest abroad, Arm said during an interview at the event.

With Chinese firms being hurt by the US tariffs and sanctions, the next phase of the BRI will be focused on realigning the manufacturing supply chain from China towards the Asean region, Arm said.

From 2013 to 2018, US$737 billion of BRI-related capital flowed into the Asean region, according to research by the CIMB Asean Research Institute (CARI) titled “China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Southeast Asia”.

Of these Asean countries, Indonesia gained the largest BRI-related capital flows at US$171 billion, followed by Vietnam with $152 billion, Cambodia $104 billion, Malaysia $98 billion and Singapore $70 billion. Behind them are Laos with $47 billion, Brunei $35 billion, Myanmar $27 billion, Thailand $24 billion and the Philippines $9 billion.

The key BRI-related projects in the region include phase one of the Bangkok-Nakhon Ratchasima railway, which was initiated in 2017 with an expected completion in 2021. The project is worth up to Bt179 billion.

Other projects include the Vientiane-Boten railway linking Laos with China at a cost of $5.8 billion, the $1.9 billion Cambodian Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville expressway, and the Morowali industrial park in Indonesia valued at $1.6 billion, according to the research.

The pace of the BRI projects and investment into the Asean region will accelerate even more due to the trade war, presenting the region with an unprecedented opportunity for economic growth, Arm claimed.

The Asean Development Bank (ADB) estimates that the total infrastructure investment needs in Asean from 2016 to 2030 will be between $2.8 trillion (the baseline estimate) and $3.1 trillion (a climate-adjusted estimate).

However, concerns were voiced by observers at the seminar about the risks of the BRI becoming a debt trap for developing countries.

The 414km Laos railway project linking Vientiane to Boten (on the Chinese border), for instance, has exacerbated Laos’ already precarious debt levels, which reached 68 per cent of GDP in 2016.

To optimise the benefits of the BRI and supply chain realignment in the region as well as minimise the debt risk of these Chinese-backed projects, Arm advised Asean governments to establish a common position on the BRI and cooperate as a region to assess the risks of the different BRI projects on a case-by-case basis.

TLScontact will also soon introduce a system for paying via QR Code.

The new service is aimed at facilitating the application process for tourists and businesspeople planning to travel to France and Portugal.

Your mindset acts as the lens for your eyes. Whatever you see, your mindset translates to your brain and then you react.

As human beings, we all have our own set of experiences, values and beliefs that shape our mindset. When different people face the same situation, each may react quite differently from the others. And the more we face different experiences, the more our mindsets are shaped.

But as humans, we also face those moments where we wish that the situation had not gone a certain way or that the other person had taken better responsibility for what transpired. We want to be able to change all that is around us, all that we see that is wrong in our world.

The reality is that you cannot change other people, nor can you change the environment around you that easily. The only thing you can change is your own mindset and inevitably the way you react towards others. In other words, your mindset and how you react to situations can either make you or break you.

This brings us to mistakes and failure. You may already know that failure is an important part of our journey towards success. When we make mistakes, they become great lessons for us as we move towards perfecting our own craft. We learn what to avoid but most importantly, we learn how to tackle the same mistakes better should we face them again.

Failing is inevitable if you step out of your comfort to grow. Mistakes and failures are great teachers, but we must be able to see them in that light. We can fail for many reasons but one way to fail in a way that signals a critical end to our growth and ambitions is through our own mindset. If we don’t see it this way, and assume our mistakes led to our downfall, it surely will go towards that path.

Our mindset is the reason we can learn from these failures, grow to become better and achieve greater heights of success. But, when further along, the very same mindset that helped you succeed could also cause your downfall.

The reality is that there are some situations we face that don’t go our way, even when we try so hard to make sure it does. How we react to these circumstances depends on us and the mindset we have nurtured. This is when we rise towards success or fall back. Because of this, we need to understand ourselves better and avoid falling on the wrong side. Below are some steps to do this.

The first step is to become more self-aware. Self-awareness isn’t just important for understanding yourself better; it also helps you understand how you affect others through your reactions.

To become more self-aware, it is important to go the extra mile in trying to listen to what you say or observing how you react towards certain people in certain situations. One of the many obvious signs that tell you that your mindset is leading you towards your downfall is when you begin blaming other people, or any other external factors, even going as far as to blame yourself when problems arise. Understanding this helps you avoid walking towards your downfall.

The second step is to determine where your mindset tends to fall along the spectrum from negative to positive. This isn’t about being overly optimistic or pessimistic. Rather, it’s about the negative or positive effects that you and your reactions have on other people and the situation.

For example, when you blame yourself or others for the problems that arise, you fall more toward the negative spectrum. Meanwhile, you fall into the positive side when you move past the blaming and take action towards trying to fix the problem.

The third and final step is to push yourself towards the positive end and continue practising to keep up the habit. We cannot change overnight, that is a fact. But if we actively choose to move towards the positive and practice it, we’ll be able to work with others and more effectively solve problems together.

Bringing up the blame example once more, to divert from self-blame or blaming others and move towards the positive end, you can instead choose to look at the situation differently. Things happen and you cannot waste time finding someone to blame. Instead, you should try to solve the problem together.

Life throws many different challenges at us. The reality is that the only way to overcome challenges is to have the right mindset to approach those challenges. We cannot change others or the environment around us very easily, but the good news is we can shape our own mindset to see things differently. That way, we can also solve those problems around us differently and hopefully for the better.

Contributed by ARINYA TALERNGSRI, chief capability officer and managing director at SEAC (formerly APMGroup), Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Centre. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa

The whitepaper found that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) will be deployed by these businesses to leverage Big Data. Technological disruption has contributed to the emergence of the fintech industry phenomenon that provides effective and differentiated services including advanced financial services, as well as the enhancement of service process efficiency, security measures and compliance. The report reveals three key success factors to be to consider before rolling out Big Data analytics. Most important was to select potential partners to embed Big Data through an integrated service.

A subsidiary of Japanese global consulting company Abeam Consulting Ltd, which has expertise in digital transformation, the Thailand company evolved a White paper after their initial study on Big Data in Thailand’s financial service business discovered information helpful to enterprises. The study found that 73.2 per cent of financial service institutions were studying Big Data and predictive analytics, with 70 per cent acknowledging that Big Data will be a critical tool to enable the organisations to cope with the major challenges in meeting their business requirements.

“Today, the financial institutions and insurance businesses are up against four different types of challenges,” explained Ichiro Hara, managing director of ABeam Consulting (Thailand) Ltd.

“First, the existing operations face intense competition in differentiating services through digital features, which causes fluctuations in market share. Second, new competitors in the fintech and insurtech businesses are finding it easier to enter the competitive fray by leveraging the customer database to disrupt the industry. Third, customer behaviour is changing in the way it seeks information and buying services wisely. The fourth has to do with the rules and regulations of the relevant agencies in the government sector,” said Hara.

He cited Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) as an example of a financial institution dealing with the challenging environment by prioritising its business requirements. SCB has defined its business requirement as finding a preferred partner with a focus on digital disruption and changing consumer behaviour. This was crucial prior to setting up SCM Abacus to use Big Data for data analytics along with AI for supporting digital platforms, to meet the needs of customers. Financial services businesses need to leverage Big Data to cope with the business challenges that lie ahead and increase their capability to deal with these unprecedented challenges, he said.

Financial services need to take benefits that come from Big Data in order to get over business challenges and enhance their readiness to cope with new challenges. Big Data involves high volumes and diverse sets of information that grow at ever-increasing rates. Data change rapidly as unconstructed data pour in from multiple sources. AI, blockchain and internet of things (IoT) are adopted to leverage Big Data, affecting the exponential growth of the fintech business and disrupting the industry in terms of advanced financial services, an increase in service process efficiency, as well as measures and compliance.

“Many companies are adopting AI to develop financial services,” said Hara. For example, AEC Securities Plc offers AI trading called AIPRO, which creates a stock-trading strategy through in-depth data analysis, and learns how to adjust the trading strategy in changing market situations and trading history. Chatbots on the AI platform have been adopted by many commercial banks to improve customer services such as SCB Connect, Krungsri Bella and TMB Me, he noted.

“Moreover, financial institutions are using AI technology to develop other services such as investment consulting, verification of customer risk profiles, and monitoring of current market situation, as well as obtaining information from various sources to provide counselling,” Hara added.

Although Big Data is a growing trend, many organisations have faced failures in the beginning stage because they did not define the business requirements clearly. Financial services institutions should start with three key factors before launching use of Big Data. The first is addressing the challenges and the effects of the challenges they are facing. The second is defining the factors for success in implementing a Big Data project, and the third is stating the advantages to be gained from a Big Data project. Enterprises must also choose a partner with in-depth analytical knowledge, professional team members focused on data analytics especially in banking and insurance or related businesses, and integrated data analytics services throughout all steps of the project.

Credit Suisse currently manages over US$25 billion (Bt773 billion) worth of sustainable assets for their clients globally, with small fraction valued at $1.5 billion (Bt46.38 billion) located in Asia. This leaves a huge potential for growth in this investment niche for the Asia Pacific region, he said.

With environmental concerns are growing, investors are seeking more sustainable assets that at the same time, do not compromise on their returns. Bilkes aims to capture this trend and offer investment solutions to his clients at Credit Suisse through impact investing.

Globally, the value of assets under management is now around $88 trillion (Bt2,721,000 trillion), Bilkes said. However, there is an under-investment in sustainable assets, with impact investing only valued at around half a trillion, he said.

Over 1,340 organisations currently manage $502 billion (Bt15.52 trillion) in assets from impact investment worldwide, according to the report, “Sizing the Impact Investing Market”, published by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN).

The US and Canada make up 58 per cent of the total impact investing assets in the report, followed by western, northern and southern Europe at 21 per cent. Meanwhile, East Asia only account for 2 per cent of worldwide total impact investing assets.

In a separate GIIN survey on the investment returns of impact investing, the majority of respondents reported that their portfolio performance overwhelmingly meets or exceeds investor expectations for social and environmental impact as well as financial return, in investments spanning from emerging markets to developed markets.

The survey asked 216 impact investors worldwide about their impact investing assets, with 15 per cent reporting that their investments were outperforming, 82 per cent were in line and 3 per cent were underperforming. Meanwhile, in a survey asking 218 regular financial investors about their assets, 15 per cent reported that their investments were outperforming, 76 per cent were in line and up to 9 per cent underperforming.

In The Asia Pacific region in particular, the private banks are seeing the transition of wealth from the older generation to the newer generation, many of whom have been educated in Western countries, Bilkes noted.

“Newer-generation investors are becoming more interested in investment opportunities in sustainable assets. It has always been our priority to align the interest of our clients with their portfolio,” he said.

Impact investing activities at Credit Suisse, Bilkes said, include investments in small and medium-sized businesses with a social or environmental mission, and the development of financial products such as those designed to support smallholder farmers and high-potential students in developing countries.

To achieve that, the region’s private and public sectors must work together to enhance economic connectivity between the different CLMVT countries, Prayut said yesterday during the CLMVT forum 2019.

The total trade value of all CLMVT countries stood at US$951 billion (Bt29.2 trillion) in 2017, while intra-Asean trade was only valued at $75 billion (Bt2.3 trillion), according to the Thai Commerce Ministry.

“These figures demonstrate that there is still a large potential for intra-regional cooperation for CLMVT countries,” said acting Commerce Minister Chutima Bunyapraphasara.

The subregion, she said, is a fast-growing region with a combined GDP growth of 5.06 per cent in 2017, higher than the world’s GDP growth of 3.15 per cent in the same year.

With this trend, the CLMVT subregion is likely to experience significant growth in business cooperation and foreign direct investment, she said.

“To enhance connectivity in the region, cross-border transportation is being continuously developed and various projects have been included formally as part of the Asean Economic Community’s connectivity plan,” Chutima stated.

One such infrastructure development which is near completion is the trilateral highway, which will connect Moreh in India with Mae Sot in Thailand through Myanmar, she said.

Construction of the highway by India and Thailand has been completed, while Myanmar expects their part of the job to be finished in the next two years.

In 2017, foreign direct investment into CLMVT countries stood at $31.9 billion, a year-on-year growth of 28 per cent, according to the Thai Commerce Ministry.

Once the infrastructure projects are complete, the subregion will be able to attract even more foreign direct investments, especially into its special economic zones, Chutima claimed.

Other cross-border infrastructure projects include the East-West economic corridor, which will connect the South China Sea with the Indian Ocean through Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar; the North-South economic corridor connecting Kunming in China with Central Thailand through Laos, and the Southern Economic Corridor which will connect the Andaman Sea with the Gulf of Thailand.

These projects are well underway, Chutima said, not revealing the date for completion for each of the projects.

The increased infrastructural connectivity will also be supported by an improvement to the region’s soft infrastructure, such as deregulating customs clearance to allow for more seamless movement of goods across the different CLMVT countries, she added. Pan Sorasak, Cambodia’s Commerce Minister stated: “The CLMVT countries have set up special economic zones across their borders to enhance connectivity and boost investment in the subregion. What we have to do next is to continue our efforts to improve the transportation infrastructure between these zones to enhance regional connectivity.”

This will be able to reduce the transportation cost for businesses and increase the ease of doing business across the subregion, he explained.

Meanwhile, Laos’ Minister of Industry, Khemmani Pholsena, said: “With the prolonged trade tensions having an adverse impact on the exports of all CLMVT countries, the subregion must look inwards to initiate more regional cooperation and rely less on exports.”

However, she said, the subregion currently faces the challenge of rising non-tariff measures erected by the CLMVT countries. This hinders trade and discourages cross-border cooperation between companies in the subregion’s private sector.

While the trade leaders of the CLMVT countries have outlined their vision of regional cooperation, the subregion’s internal trade volume is dwindling at an alarming speed. The rate of growth in bilateral trade between Thailand and Vietnam, the subregion’s two largest economies grew by only 1.39 per cent year-on-year in the first five months of this year (valued at $7.5 billion), compared to the same period last year, which saw a 16.86 per cent growth (valued at $7.2 billion), according to the Thai customs department.

A similar downtrend is seen in Thai trade with Myanmar and Cambodia, both plunging in growth rate to under 2 per cent in the first five months of the year, from about 20 per cent for the same period year on year.

The most worrying signs are in Thai-Laos trade, which was valued at $2.6 billion in the first five months this year, a reduction from $2.9 billion in the same period last year. This marks a 10 per cent year-on-year contraction in trade value between the two countries.

They are: “Scoo Pup”, led by Kamonrose Mahattanasomboon and Arisara Taksavaja; “Marshmallow”, led by Virapong Promarach and Pornpak Lertmukda; and “Poonpoon and Rok”, led by Thee Khanthavit and Kajornphan Sumpownoi.

The three qualified teams will receive Bt40,000 in cash prize each, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate their work at the Hong Kong International Licensing Show 2020 in January next year.

The event was held recently by the Ministry of Culture and TACGA.

Hong Kong International Licensing Show has been held consecutively for 17 years, attracting over 20,000 visitors yearly and with more than 350 companies exhibiting 800 brands of digital content, characters and licensing products.