He said Vietnam had become a long-term investment site for the Japanese because of its convenient geographic location, stable politics, improved infrastructure and abundant and low-cost labour.

With more than 865 projects with a total registered investment capital of US$2.87 billion, Japanese ranks sixth out of countries and territories having investment in the city, he said.

In recent years, Japanese visitors have ranked first or second in the top 10 of foreign visitors to the city, and the number of Vietnamese visitors to Japan has also increased significantly.

The city expects to continue to receive co-operation and support from the Japanese Government and enterprises to improve the growth , he said.

“The city will always welcome and create favourable conditions for foreign investors, including Japanese, who come to seek long-term investment and business opportunities,” he said.

Speaking at the conference, a special advisor to the Japanese Prime Minister, Iijima Isao, who also led a delegation of 22 Japanese businesses to HCM City, said he believed that Japanese firms would continue to invest strongly in Vietnam, particularly in HCM City.

The Japanese busineses who visited the city this time are Japanese leading companies involved in pharmaceutical, medical, water and waste treatment, agricultural, transport, construction, logistics, manufacturing, tourism and IT sectors.

Vu Tien Loc, chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the country’s participation in a series of free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, had made it more popular among investors.

Recently, many investors from Japan, the US and EU have visited Vietnam to seek business opportunities, he said, adding that many companies had shifted their investments from China to ASEAN countries, including Vietnam.

Masuda Chikahiro, deputy chief of the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) Vietnam, said Japanese companies wanted to penetrate the market of nearly 100 million people in Vietnam and use it as a production base for export.

He said that reform of the investment environment was needed to welcome a new investment wave to Vietnam.

Japanese firms, he said, were striving to overcome two difficulties, including the rate of locally-made products supplied to Japanese producers in Vietnam. This stands at about 33 per cent in 2014, much lower compared to some other countries in the region.

Secondly, the country’s human resources have yet to meet requirements of Japanese firms, he said.

Vietnam should solve issues such as these mentioned in the Vietnam-Japan Joint Initiative, he said.

At the conference, Pham Thiet Hoa, director of the Investment and Trade Promotion Centre of HCM City, told Japanese investors that the city was seeking investors for the 27.2 km monorail line No2 and the 6.3km underground monorail No6 projects, as well as the underground mall project at the Ben Thanh Central Station and the Saigon Safari project in Cu Chi District.

BI Governor Agus Martowardojo said the cooperation would be focused on three strategic activities, namely the synchronization and synergy of policies to accelerate the implementation of structural reform programs, the exchange of data and information and analysis related to economic and financial development in the regions and the establishment ofa regional forum for financial and economic coordination.

“Through this forum, various strategic issues will be discussed to produce policy recommendations on economic and financial development in the regions,” said Agus. He added that it was expected the forum could further integrate various forums, activities and initiatives related to economic and financial development in the regions.

Agus explained that during the 2005 to 2010 period, Indonesia’s inflation rate stood at 8.5 percent. In 2010 to 2015, it went down to 5.8 percent and by the end of 2015, it had further declined to 3.35 percent. As of March 2016, Indonesia’s inflation was 4.45 percent.

The central bank governor said through closer coordination of the central government and local administrations, Indonesia’s inflation was expected to fall below 5 percent.

“With the regional coordination forums, it is expected that economic growth in the regions will improve, which will eventually boost the people’s welfare,” he added.

Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said the central government urged all local administrations to use their regional budgets efficiently. With an increase in regional transfer funds, it was expected all regions could contribute to the country’s economic growth.

“The transfer funds will decrease the burden of the central government but it is also expected that economic growth should increase, driven by the improved economy of the regions. Overall, it should begin with sound spending policies,” he explained.

In the 2016 state budget, the central government is set to transfer Rp770 trillion ( US$58.20 billion ) to regions and villages throughout the country.

A news daily reported that the elephant, whose age was estimated at around 40-45 years, drew its last breath near Bakheng Mountain, shortly after ferrying two tourists to one of the archaeological park’s temples.

It had been walking for about 40 minutes, said a spokesman from the Angkor Elephant company, who added that they were saddened by the loss.

The elephant had been working for the company since 2001.

“After our veterinarian checked…we concluded that she died of heart attack due to high temperatures and lack of wind,” the spokesman told the paper.

The temperature in Siem Reap reportedly hit a scorching 40 deg C on Friday.

Photos posted on Facebook by user Yem Senok, which showed the elephant lying on its side by the road, were shared over 8,000 times and sparked an outcry on social media.

A change.org petition was subsequently put up, calling for an end to elephant riding at the Angkor Wat.

It has since garnered over 12,000 signatures.

According to Jack Highwood of the Cambodia-based conservation group Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment, there are still 13 elephants working for the Angkor Elephant Company – the largest concentration of captive elephants in the country. –

“India is a developing country like Myanmar and we have many cultural affinities,” he said.

“Most parts of India, especially in the east, are culturally very close to Myanmar. So, Myanmar students can feel at home. As food is also similar, they will feel comfortable. Generally, a three-year programme at an Indian university costs only about 400,000 rupees [Bt200,000] including accommodation, food and tuition fees. After finishing their degrees, they can also find a job with multinational companies,” he said.

About 15 universities from India joined the third India Education Fair held in Yangon early this month. They included AIMS Institute, Mody University, Parul University, SRM University, VIT University, Assam University, ITM University, KIIT University, Amity University, Ajeenkya DY Patil University, PCTE Group of Institutions and Krupanidhi Group of Institutions.

Presiding over the event, the ambassador said the fair was a private initiative.

“I encouraged them to invest and start schools, colleges, and universities in Myanmar, when Myanmar’s rules and regulations |permit it. We would love it to be here.”

He noted that raising awareness was really important as Indian universities were not yet popular among Myanmar students.

According to Mukhopadhaya, the prospect was bright, as Myanmar people become more aware of India and its quality services.

“A lot of Myanmar medical patients are now going to India for medical treatment. As they go there, they will discover there are good schools. Then they will think of their children going to schools like that,” he said.

The envoy talked about the government-to-government scholarship programme of India’s Council of Cultural Relations under which close to 10,000 students from all over the world study in Indian universities. Nearly 25 Myanmar students have been awarded scholarships so far.

Additionally, India offers two scholarship schemes for Myanmar students through Myanmar’s Education Ministry. About 40 Myanmar nationals have joined these schemes for studies in various subjects such as art, dance, music, finance, Buddhism, Pali, Sanskrit and religious studies.

“Once we see there is more demand, the government of India will be very ready to increase the number of scholarships,” he said.

“In the long term, we will need to work on accreditation so that degrees in Myanmar are also recognised at Indian universities … Calcutta University has signed a memorandum of understanding with Dagon University. We would like to see many more such things.”

Expectations from the fair

Bangalore-based AIMS Institute participated in all three India education fairs in Myanmar. Last year, the institute welcomed two Myanmar students, boosting the total number to eight. AIMS’ regional admission director Sarabindu Pal wants to welcome more.

“This year, we expect six to eight Myanmar students as a result of our participation in this fair. We offer Myanmar students very good discounts for business studies and IT courses. They can get up to US$3,000 [Bt105,000] partial scholarships. They can visit our website and apply for the scholarships online. We expect more than 30 new students from Myanmar over the next three years,” he said.

He said that the BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) course was the most popular at the AIMS Institute today. During the education fair, Myanmar students showed an interest in business studies as well as tourism and hospitality programmes.

Suresh Anand Mani, business development manager of SRM University, said the university’s debut participation in the fair not only aimed at finding new students but also at collaboration with Myanmar universities about students’ exchange programmes, curriculum exchange, faculty exchange and research work.

“The reason we came here is to share knowledge between SRM and Myanmar universities. We want Myanmar students to know more about SRM and what we are offering. Basically in the past, we had students from Myanmar who applied on their own. Every year, we |usually get two or three Myanmar students who apply online,” he said.

According to Mani, SRM has more than 2,500 international students in the campus, including eight from Myanmar. Four more have submitted applications. It aims to |concentrate on receiving more Southeast Asian students.

Mani said Myanmar nationals were more interested in technical education such as |engineering and technology, and courses in the medical and health sector. The university has partnered with Yangon Technological University for an exchange of knowledge and expertise.

Normally, an engineering course for undergraduate students costs about $9,000 per year, covering tuition fees and others. A partial scholarship would reduce the tuition fee by 25 to 35 per cent.

Harpreet Kang, dean of international affairs at PCTE Group of Institutes, saw demand for studies in fashion designing, hotel management, airlines and tourism, besides some enquiries about biotechnology.

Tuition fees cost about $5,000 a year, but special full scholarships are on offer for Myanmar students. The scholarship winners can also earn a 50 per cent discount on in-campus accommodation, food, Internet and other facilities, which cost about $1,000 a year.

Asian countries were the main buyers, buying 76.12 per cent of the exports, followed by the Americas with 10.94 per cent and Africa with 9.76 per cent.

Common white rice accounted for 29.31 per cent, up 135.44 per cent from the same period last year due to high demand from Indonesia and the Philippines.

Shipments of glutinous rice surged by 200.16 per cent due to an increase in demand from China. But broken rice exports were down by 64.76 per cent.

The association said the number of contracts to be executed in the next few months, excluding new contracts, remains high, with around 1.4 million tonnes to be shipped.

Export prices have increased significantly in recent months, especially since March.

Meanwhile, high demand from exporters and falling output in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta because of drought and saltwater intrusion have pushed up domestic prices of the grain.

As a result, Vietnam ’s export prices are higher than those of other Asian suppliers, causing the country to lose its advantage in the competitive global market.

The association quoted the US Department of Agriculture as saying world output in 2015-16 declined by 1.6 per cent to 471 million tonnes, a second straight year of decline.

El Nino was a major factor, causing smaller crops in many rice producing countries.

Global consumption will meanwhile rise by 0.3 per cent to 484.2 million tonnes, making it the third consecutive year when consumption will exceed production, leading to a depletion of stockpiles.

The USDA expects China’s rice imports this year to equal that of last year at around five million tonnes. In the first quarter China was the biggest buyer of Vietnamese rice.

The association is concerned that China may shift to buying rice from other regional countries due to rising prices in Vietnam .

The VFA expects exports to reach 3.01 million tonnes in the first half, a year-on-year increase of 12 per cent.

This was followed in late 2014 with the opening of City of Dreams Manila. Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada is expected to open his Manila Bay Resorts in Entertainment City by the end of 2016 while Resorts World Bayshore is scheduled to open in 2018.

“It’s too many, too fast,” Razon, chair of Solaire operator Bloomberry Resorts Corp., told reporters on Thursday on the sidelines of the annual meeting of International Container Terminal Services Inc., which he also owns.

“The market is not growing as fast as the industry wants it to,” Razon said. “Supply is growing faster than the market.”

While the Philippines is facing oversupply, regional gaming hubs, meanwhile, are facing harder times. Casinos in Macau, the world’s biggest gambling market, are struggling with slowing earnings growth following an anti-graft campaign launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Amid new supply putting a strain on gaming prospects, Razon said the company was expecting to reverse its 3.37-billion pesos (US$72.4 million) loss in 2015. The firm erased the 4.07 billion pesos profit it posted the previous year.

He said Bloomberry remained keen on expanding its presence overseas. Bloomberry already owns the Jeju Sun Hotel and Casino in South Korea.

Razon said the company was also short-listed to bid for a casino in Cyprus this July and it earlier proposed to build an integrated casino in Argentina.

“The outlook is far better this year,” he said. “We have much lower costs. No more bad accounts, bad debt.”

He also cited growing revenues, after Bloomberry said total revenues in 2015 grew 7 per cent to 34.36 billion pesos. He added VIP volume “has [also] been growing.”

(US$1 = 46.58 pesos)

At the airport, Jokowi was welcomed by Vice President Jusuf Kalla, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli, State Secretary Pratikno, Presidential chief of staff Teten Masduki, Indonesian Military chief Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti and Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Purnama Tjahaja.

During a press conference, Jokowi cited two things gained from the working visit. First, he mentioned strengthening economic ties with the countries he visited.

“The total business-to-business deals I signed were worth US$20.5 billion,” Jokowi said in a statement on Saturday night.

He also highlighted commitments to focus on a particular sector in each country he visited. In Germany, he signed a commitment to training and vocational education to enhance Indonesian workers’ skills in a competitive market. To follow up on the commitment, a German delegation will visit Indonesia in May.

In the UK, cooperation will focus on the creative economy and creative industries, which will be followed up by the Creative Economy Agency ( Bekraf ).

While in Belgium, Indonesia, and the EU held a discussion on scoping papers for a comprehensive economic partnership agreement ( CEPA ), which had been halted for years. The scoping papers will form the basis of negotiations on the CEPA.

“We very much appreciate the acceleration of the scoping paper discussion and hope to continue the negotiations immediately,” he added.

In the Netherlands, cooperation will focus on enhancing maritime cooperation and water management. Jokowi said the Dutch prime minister would visit Indonesia in November with a business delegation.

Further, he said, the four countries appreciated Indonesia’s role in promoting peace through a moderate interpretation of Islam, democracy, and tolerance.

“Today, the Indonesian Islamic values of peace, democracy, moderation and tolerance are in the eyes of the world,” Jokowi said.

$606m deals with the Netherlands alone

Indonesia and the Netherlands signed business agreements worth US$606 million during his visit to the country.

The business agreements cover the construction of a solar panel plant in Surabaya, East Java; potato industry development, the Pancasila Palmerah Bridge and turbine power development in East Nusa Tenggara; and human resources capacity building in the maritime sector.

Speaking at a business forum in The Hague on Friday, Jokowi assured businesspeople that Indonesia’s economy had shown resilience and even surprising growth, reaching 5.04 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015 despite global economic challenges.

Indonesia’s economic stability was being driven by widespread infrastructure development and investment as its two engines of economic growth, the President said.

As China’s economy experiences a period of transition, he continued, many companies would look to relocate their factories from China to Southeast Asia. “And of course Indonesia will also see advantages, especially as Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia,” he added.

The President invited Dutch businesspeople to invest in Indonesia, adding that his government was continuously implementing deregulations to shorten licensing and to ease doing business in the country.

“I don’t really know how often customers come, whether they come during the weekend or weekdays, or how much they spend,” Koh said. “Sometimes the ladies carry too many bags and they don’t know where their coffee cards are. Sometimes the paper cards go bad because of the rain.”

Inspired partially by the Starbucks Loyalty Programme, which enables Starbucks’ customers to scan their smartphones at the store to gain reward points, Koh and his 10-member team are looking at launching Peko Peko, a mobile platform that allows users to accumulate reward points at coffee shops. It would also allow coffee merchants to track such users and monitor the loyalty programmes the merchants run.

Koh believes Vietnam is among the most attractive emerging markets for start-ups in Southeast Asia because of the young population and the many still untapped needs in the market.

“Everyone knows Singapore is a place to start, but it’s not really a place to make money because the market is very small. The population size of Hanoi is like Singapore, and then you still have HCM City and Da Nang,” he said.

Koh was among hundreds of start-up founders attending the two-day Tech in Asia 2016 in Singapore last week, pitching their start-up ideas to potential investors who have the same vision to tap into Southeast Asia’s emerging markets.

On Tuesday, the news also broke about Alibaba’s expansion into Southeast Asia with the US$1 billion deal to acquire Lazada, which sells products in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. This further validates Southeast Asia’s attractiveness for start-ups and investors alike, with a 600-million mobile-driven consumer market.

Speaking at the conference, Facebook co-founder and Founding Partner of B Capital Group, Eduardo Saverin, noted Southeast Asia’s lack of infrastructure in many markets in the region as an opportunity to force entrepreneurs to innovate and think outside-the-box.

Besides, the region is a truly mobile-first environment where cheap mobile devices are making it much easier for people to access services and products, according to Saverin.

“Soon a young girl in rural Indonesia will have more information at her fingertips than I had when I started at Harvard,” Saverin said.

A report released last year by Ericsson suggested that almost two-thirds of mobile phone subscriptions in Southeast Asia and Oceania would be smartphones by 2020, reaching a staggering number of about 800 million people.

In Vietnam, the number of smartphone users is around 22 million, according to some reports, and predicted to reach 26 million in 2016.

The greater availability and affordability of smartphones has paved the way for strong download growth of mobile applications in the region, said Danielle Levitas, senior vice president for research and marcom at App Annie, a California-based business intelligence company and analyst firm.

App Annie considers Vietnam among the frontier markets for mobile application growth, with download growth of mobile applications having risen nearly 60 percent year-on-year in Vietnam (2014-15). Notably, mobile games are undoubtedly a big part of Vietnam’s culture, accounting for nearly half of downloads on both Google Play and iOS in 2015.

The mobile-first environment and densely populated cities in Southeast Asia also make services such as ridesharing or other services in the so-called “sharing economy” continue to thrive, Levitas emphasised.

For Facebook co-founder Saverin, who has continued stepping up his investments in Southeast Asian start-ups, Southeast Asia is also a less crowded market for investors, and governments across the region are rolling out initiatives to support entrepreneurship.

The Vietnamese government has also stepped up efforts to support start-ups and cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship in the country.

A new set of rules are being drafted by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, aimed towards easing up procedures for local and foreign venture capital funds to operate in Vietnam.

The government is ambitious about turning the country into a start-up nation with 5,000 tech firms by 2020. Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam called for a renewal in thinking in terms of supporting start-up initiatives to catch up with the rest of the world.

Topica Founder Institute, which offers training courses for start-up founders in Vietnam, estimated that at least 67 tech start-ups in Vietnam received funding last year, with 48 percent of angle/seed deals coming from overseas investors.

Many start-ups in Singapore are also looking at Vietnam for users.

Rinita Vanjre, co-founder and CEO of BonAppetour, is among those. The Singapore-based start-up is about food sharing, connecting home cooks with travellers and foodies, for a unique local dining experience. A local host can post his or her offering on the site, prepare the meal, and then travellers can come to the host’s place to dine.

The concept of dining with strangers, Vanjre admitted, might be harder to take off in Vietnam due to language barriers and the fact that street foods are technically available for most of the day.

However, “there are already people who have expressed an interest in becoming a host on the site,” she said. “So we are very excited about that.”