Phanthachith Inthilath, chairman of Intra Corporation Sole Co, said recently that among Asean countries, Laos has plentiful natural resources, as 75 per cent of the country comprises mountainous areas and rivers.

“This assists development in many areas, including hydropower development, which is the main reason why the government is developing Laos to be the battery of Asia by producing electricity for export to neighbouring countries and the region,” he said.

Laos has potential to develop in many areas, such as energy, agriculture and industry, by using its aquatic, water and food resources for the benefit of the people of Asean.

Tourism also has plenty of potential as Laos has been a top tourist destination for many years, especially Luang Prabang, which has been included among the best destinations of the world.

“Even though Laos is a landlocked country, the government has a policy and purpose to turn it into a land-link country by developing the east-west economic corridor.

“It has also recently taken steps to develop Vung Ang seaport, railways and highways to facilitate the transit of goods from the west, including Myanmar and Thailand, passing through Laos to the east,” he said.

He said his company is part of the consortium that will develop the seaport as part of steps to remove transport bottlenecks.

Transporting goods to Europe or the US takes much time and costs a lot.

“But if we can complete the east-west economic corridor, transportation costs from Laos to Thailand, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and China will decrease,” he said.

“Thus, product costs will also reduce because transportation cost accounts for almost 20 per cent to 30 per cent of product cost.

“So if this project works, it can reduce 30 per cent to 40 per cent of product cost, which will give us more of a chance to bargain in the market.”

The opening of the Asean Economic Community has resulted in more competition, but Laos has to look at its potential and become more competitive by using its natural resources and energy sources and by boosting exports, he said.

Tourist spots that are yet to be discovered and developed could boost tourism and promote the culture and environment, as the government has a policy for sustainable development.

News editors from 24 leading media organisations in 20 countries began two days of discussions on how they could improve their news and information exchange, as well as how to more effectively portray the Asian reality to other continents.

The event was hosted by Lao Press in Foreign Languages, which publishes Vientiane Times, the national English-language newspaper of the Lao PDR, and was supported by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Media Progamme Asia.

ANN hopes to cement a number of initiatives that will fulfill the growing interest in and demand for news from Asia by other countries.

Editor-in-Chief of Lao Press in Foreign Languages, Thonglor Duangsavanh, said the ANN meeting in Laos underscores his newspaper’s commitment to working with other Asian media outlets.

Vientiane Times is also encouraging ANN members to gain a deeper insight into developments in Laos through briefing sessions on the new rail network linking Southeast Asia and China and the upcoming Visit Laos Year 2018.

“I hope that ANN news editors will share their points of views and give advice on how Asian media outlets can cooperate and help each other to achieve the goals of enhancing and improving news coverage of Asian affairs by Asian media, provide members with reliable access to news sources, and help promote the professional development of journalism in the region,” Thonglor said.

Executive Director of ANN, Pana Janviroj, said Asia’s landscapes are changing rapidly whether in relation to regional security, politics, technology innovation, or lifestyle. ANN members are working together on quality reporting for readers and viewers around the world.

“This Vientiane meeting will discuss details of the ongoing collaboration and also set new pan-Asia news topics which members will together carry out,” Pana said.

Participants are also meeting with local officials during a special talk on “Laos’ railway network with Southeast Asia and China” by Deputy Director General of the Railway Department, Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Sengthavisay.

He gave a presentation on the Laos-China railway which is currently under construction and will be 414km long when complete.

Today they will discuss the ‘fake news’ issue, which is posing a challenge for the network’s journalists and others around the world.

ANN has been in existence for 17 years and is the world’s largest and most active media alliance of its kind.

It is set to relaunch a website in the fourth quarter of this year on top of the global e-newsletter which is edited out of offices in Delhi and Bangkok.

The new database service from selected members will also be launched out of Singapore shortly. ANN is also stepping up cooperation in VDO sharing and co-production via Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong.

ANN members exchange news and photos on a daily basis, carry commentaries from member media, and organise new media workshops for journalists as well as public conferences.

The alliance works closely with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Media Progamme Asia.

ANN members comprise The Korea Herald, China Daily and China Post, Gogo Mongolia, Yomiuri Shimbun and The Japan News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Statesman (India), The Island (Sri Lanka), Kuensel (Bhutan), Kathmandu Post (Nepal), Daily Star (Bangladesh), Eleven Media (Myanmar), The Nation (Thailand), Jakarta Post (Indonesia) , The Star and Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia), The Phnom Penh Post and Rasmei Kampuchea (Cambodia), Borneo Bulletin (Brunei), The Straits Times (Singapore), Vietnam News (Vietnam), Philippine Daily Inquirer (The Philippines), and Vientiane Times (Laos).

The cooperation will provide a significant boost to the bank’s fee income, said Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia’s retail banking head, Lanny Hendra, in Jakarta on Thursday.

She expressed optimism that the bank could achieve its fee income target, considering the improved economic conditions.

Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia previously cooperated with the insurance company to launch several products that met positive responses from its customers, she said, adding that it was the bank’s sixth cooperation with Prudential Indonesia.

Executive director and head of wealth management Bambang Simarno said more than 2,000 priority banking customers had used the products launched in collaboration with Prudential.

According to its financial report, the bank booked 606.57 billion rupiah (Bt1.51 billion) in fee income during the second quarter of the year, a slight increase from 598.43 billion rupiah in the same quarter last year. The second quarter achievement was 87 per cent higher than what the bank booked in the first quarter of 2017.

Factory output surged 21 per cent in July from the same month a year earlier, boosted by robust electronics manufacturing – now the brightest spot in the Singapore economy.

This blew past economists’ expectations of a 12.9 per cent rise, as shown in a Bloomberg poll, and the sector’s strongest pace of growth so far this year.

Manufacturing, which makes up a fifth of the economy and has been a key growth driver this year, is being lifted by strong global demand for semiconductors and related equipment.

All manufacturing segments expanded last month.

Electronics was the top performer, with output soaring 49.1 per cent from last year, once again driven by the semiconductors, computer peripherals and infocomms and consumer electronics segments.

Output in the precision engineering cluster – which has also benefited from the rise in global electronics demand – grew 21.8 per cent year on year.

The traditionally volatile biomedical manufacturing cluster’s output grew 5 per cent, largely led by the medical technology segment which expanded 17.7 per cent on the back of strong export demand for medical devices.

If biomedical manufacturing were not taken into account, overall factory output would have grown 24.9 per cent.

The general manufacturing and chemicals segments also expanded. Even transport engineering – which has been weighed down by the marine and offshore engineering segment – grew 2.3 per cent, thanks to better showings in land transport and aerospace.

On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, factory output increased by 1 per cent in July over June, against expectations of a 3.9 per cent drop. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output grew 4.9 per cent.

Unlike an-already-revoked regulation that only classified rice into one type as ‘medium,’ the new regulation classifies rice into three types: ‘medium,’ ‘premium’ and ‘specialty’. The price ceilings apply to the first two categories only.

The price ceiling for medium rice or bulk rice usually white in colour and found in traditional markets with 14 per cent maximum water rate and 25 per cent broken rice rate is 9,450 rupiah (US$0.70) per kg in all provinces of Java, Lampung and South Sumatra in Sumatra, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi; 9,950 rupiah per kg in the rest of Sumatra’s provinces, East Nusa Tenggara and Kalimantan; and 10,250 rupiah in Maluku and Papua.

The price ceiling for premium rice or those usually semi-transparent in colour found in bulk or packaged with 14 per cent maximum water rate and 15 per cent broken rice rate is 12,800 rupiah per kg in all provinces in Java, Lampung, South Sumatra, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi; 13,300 rupiah per kg in the rest of Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara and Kalimantan; and 13,600 rupiah in Maluku and Papua.

Specialty rice includes organic, Thai, basmati, Japonica and others.

“The regulation for this will be out today and will be applied as of Sept 1,” Minister Enggartiasto “Enggar” Lukita told a press conference on Thursday after meeting with businesspeople and governmental institutions.

Previously, Enggar revoked the old regulation after it was protested by rice traders and distributors.

Meanwhile, residents in Jakarta can now track rice stock and prices online via the Cipinang Rice Central Market (PIBC) website pibc.foodstation.co.id, to ensure they are purchasing the basic commodity at fair prices, said Arief Prasetyo Adi, president director of Jakarta city administration-owned firm PT Food Station Tjipinang Jaya.

Jakarta-owned enterprise Food Station manages the Cipinang market, where sellers and traders from across the capital source their rice..

“Food Station also facilitates the price and stock stability of rice, and we created the website so the public can monitor these in real time,” he told reporters Thursday.

The PIBC website provides information on the average daily price of rice varieties, from medium to premium and to specialty rice, based on data gathered across traditional and modern markets. It also provides the central market’s wholesale price for the Pandanwangi, Rojolele and Setra Ramos rice varieties, as well as the wholesale price of sugar.

The website also tracks the daily stock and sources of rice at the PIBC to provide transparent information on the basic commodity.

The information is provided in a visually friendly graphical format on a customizable dashboard.

After tasting success in the first seven months, the issue of Government bonds in Vietnam have been facing difficulty from early August with the bidders’ expectation of rising interest rate and decreasing bank liquidity.

Following the unsuccessful auctions in the first two weeks of August, the State Treasury was more cautious last week, conducting an auction for bonds with three tenures of five, 10 and 15 years, totalling only 3 trillion dong (US$132 million). However, no tenure was issued successfully, with the bid volume dropping sharply to 3.48 trillion dong, the lowest since the beginning of the year.

Bid interest rates also increased sharply by 10, 17 and 40 basis points for five, 10 and 15-year bonds, respectively.

It was quite in contrast to the success of the G-bond issue in the first seven months of the year when the State Treasury met up to nearly 77 per cent of the yearly issue plan. Demand for G-bonds in the first seven months was often three or four times higher than the issued volume that helped the average winning ratio reach 82.5 per cent and winning yield decline significantly.

With the success of the G-bond issue in the first seven months, the National Financial Supervisory Commission last month even said if it could maintain the issue rate of roughly 20 trillion dong per month on average, the State Treasury would meet the G-bond issue plan for the entire 2017 in September.

However, that has changed in the past three weeks with the only successful auction being held on August 2.

According to SSI Research, the expectation of changes in the liquidity of the banking system and the interest rate has caused problems for the State Treasury in capital mobilisation through the bond issue.

The interest rate in the inter-bank market last week inched up for the second consecutive week, with the overnight rate rising nine basis points to 0.76 per cent.

The State Bank of Vietnam last week also pumped in a total of 4 trillion dong into the economy through the bill issue. – Viet Nam News

Cambodian SMEs get support to go public

In a move to urge small- and medium-sized businesses to list on the Cambodian stock exchange’s Growth Board, more than 70 companies have joined a new initiative offered by the market regulator that will provide professional guidance on how to meet listing criteria, paving the way to having a first listing sometime next year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission launched its “Excellence Programme” with the aim to help companies develop the capacity to prepare adequate financial reports, establish proper accounting principles and learn about how the growth board can provide additional funding sources.

“This programme will be a major contributor to developing the capacity of SMEs in order to meet listing criteria,” SEC director Sou Socheat said.

“We are optimistic that there will be at least three or four companies that can be listed on the Cambodia Securities Exchange’s Growth Board next year.”

The Excellence Programme is a three-day seminar that will choose five companies for in-house consultation by the SEC and underwriting firms.

The seminar is designed for owners and top management of local companies.

The Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) has struggled to attract a single SME since the launch of its Growth Board in late 2015.

According to SEC regulations, companies are required to have a minimum of US$500,000 (Bt16.65 million) in operating capital to list, compared to $7.5 million on the main board.

Companies listing on the platform are also required to release one year of audited financial results, compared to the two years required for bigger companies. – The Phnom Penh Post

SEC probes DW Capital’s ‘unauthorised’ trades

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing a petition from the Capital Markets Integrity Corp (CMIC) to take over stock brokerage DW Capital Inc, whose operations had been suspended due to “unauthorised” trading of stocks worth around 2.6 billion peso.

CMIC, a self-regulatory organisation and the primary regulator of the trading participants of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), filed with the SEC on August 8 a petition to take over DW Capital.

Based on a briefer issued by the SEC on Friday, the CMIC’s petition alleged that DW Capital had engaged in unauthorized trading of stocks involving five accounts with market value of “short” or sell positions amounting to around P2.6 billion as of July 28, 2017. – The Philippine Daily Inquirer