High-level delegations from Thailand’s Sakon Nakhon, Nakhon Phanom, Amnatchareun and Mukdahan provinces recently met with Savannakhet authorities to discuss cooperation in trade, investment and tourism.

The delegations informed each other about their respective socio-economic development status.

Savannakhet provincial governor Santiphab Phomvihane reported that the province’s GDP growth increased from 10 per cent in 2010 to 12.5 per cent in 2015, with annual average GDP per capita rising from $897 in 2010 to $1,785 last year.

Foreign investment amounted to $5.2 billion last year, a 58 per cent increase compared to five years ago.

He said the province currently has 160 investment projects operated by companies from more than 20 countries, and numerous modern factories have set up business in the Savan-Seno special economic zone, the Dansavan border area and outside the special zone.

The value of imports and exports crossing the Savannakhet-Mukdahan Friendship Bridge reached $1.341 billion last year while the number of tourist arrivals increased from 435,900 in 2006 to about 1 million in 2015.

Exports for the five years from 2011 to 2015 reached $3.6 billion, and imports $1.2 billion, while revenue collection exceeded the plan each year by 18 to 20 per cent.

Santiphab noted that cooperation in trade, investment and tourism would play a crucial role in the economic development of Savannakhet and the four provinces of Thailand as well as the two countries.

The five provinces already have a long-standing trade relationship and this meeting was an opportunity to further boost cooperation and strengthen relations between the two countries, he added.

The formation of the Asean Economic Community this year will also be a good opportunity to boost trade and investment between the two countries as well as the five provinces.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, trade between Laos and Thailand has developed over time and is continuing to grow.

In 2014 Laos and Thailand enjoyed an increase in two-way trade growth of 6.3 per cent, with the value of trade rising to $5.44 billion.

Main imports include fuel, vehicles and spare parts, raw materials for garment production, electricity, food and drinks, electronic goods, and equipment for industrial use and agricultural purposes.

Laos’ main exports are agricultural produce such as maize and cassava, timber and wood products, electricity and minerals such as copper.

In 2015, Laos and Thailand planned to increase their two-way trade value from US$5.4 billion to US$8 billion within the next three years.

The leaders of the five provinces signed the Minutes of Understanding, agreeing to boost and strengthen economic cooperation based on the principles of fairness and benefit for each of the provinces.

They agreed to exchange technical teams and promote activities relating to trade and investment, tourism and culture, and any other areas of mutual interest.

The project surrounding Kuala Lumpur International Airport is called KLIA Aeropolis, which has total land area of 100 square kilometres.

Airport operator Malaysia Airports Holdings, which is behind the project, also wants to bring meetings and conventions facilities to Sepang, located about an hour away by car from downtown Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia’s biggest airport has two terminals – the main KLIA terminal and the recently opened KLIA2 for low-cost carriers.

In May of last year, the Mitsui Outlet Park KLIA – billed as the largest factory outlet shopping mall in Southeast Asia – was opened just 6km away from the airport.

The area is also home to the Sepang International Circuit that hosts F1 races and other motorsports events.

Malaysia Airports envisions the aviation hub contributing 30 billion ringgit (Bt260 billion) to Malaysia’s economic growth over the next 15 years, with 56,000 jobs created.

Launching the KLIA Aeropolis on Monday, officials said it will complement services offered in Singapore and its main Changi airport.

“We are not competing with Changi,” said Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai at the press conference.

Citing increasing air traffic in Asia, officials said Malaysia is taking in the spill-over effect from its neighbour.

“There’s enough demand being generated,” said Badlisham Ghazali, managing director of Malaysia Airports, referring to growth in air travel and the need for more planes, spare parts and maintenance.

“Singapore has a capacity, land constraint. They have the ecosystem but because it can’t expand, businesses are looking at us,” said Malaysia Airports general manager Randhill Singh.

Randhill said Malaysia is also looking at European firms eyeing offshore opportunities.

“The idea is to bring them here,” he said.

Through the Aeropolis project, Malaysia is planning to raise its cargo and logistics traffic in five years.

With 726,000 tonnes of cargo per year, Malaysia intends to catch up to Singapore’s 1.8 million tonnes, banking on the growth of e-commerce.

Officials said Malaysia has the capacity and manpower needed to make Aeropolis work with programmes already in place.

“Definitely we will train enough talent for the needs of this industry,” Liow said.

The main international airport KLIA services 50 million passengers annually, compared to Singapore’s 55 million.

The US President Obama’s three-day visit to Vietnam will boost trade and investment co-operation between the two countries. US investors have been paying increasing attention to the local stock market recently. But President Obama’s visit that began on Monday raises hope of greater investment in the market.

Trade co-operation between Vietnam and the United States is undergoing positive evolution and will develop more with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung told local media yesterday.

Local statistics reveal the United Sates iscurrently the largest export market for Vietnam. In 2015, the value of Vietnamese exports to the United States reached US$33.48 billion, accounting for 20.6 per cent of total export value, an increase of 16.9 per cent compared with 2014. As a result, Vietnam has become the biggest exporter to the United States within Asean.

According to experts, with TPP, the door to the US market will open even wider for local goods after taxes are reduced from 20 per cent to zero per cent, giving the country a huge advantage in competing with non-TPP rivals, such as China, India, Thailand and Bangladesh.

Textiles, footwear and seafood, shares of which have been increasingly listed on local exchanges, are among the key Vietnamese export products to the United States.

According to Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), US investors in the Vietnamese market often invest through their subsidiaries and affiliates based in other markets, such as the British Virgin Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong and other foreign countries. So current investment statistics do not fully reflect the real flow of US investment.

Since US investors have high standards for their projects, not only will the Vietnamese economy and society benefit, but also the environment, SSI said.

US investors have been present since the beginning of the local stock market in 2000, according to lists of foreign investors in the Vietnam Securities Depository.

SSI has witnessed a growth in US investment in the local market. In 2009, the US-based Van Eck Fund established the VanEck Vectors Vietnam exchange traded fund (first U.S. ETF, focused exclusively on Vietnam which provides one-trade access) to invest in Vietnam. Currently, the fund is valued at over $340 million.

But the presence of US investors is still limited, due to geographical distance and the small-scale of Vietnam’s stock market, SSI said. The firm said large US management funds also have branches in Singapore and Hong Kong to invest in regional markets, allowing for indirect invest in the Vietnamese market.

The Managing Director of Mekong Capital, Chris Freund, told local media the fourth fund of MekongInvestment (MEF III) – which has $112 million in capital, including US capital – was just set up in Vietnam this month, attracting the attention of US investors to the local market.

The country’s stock market is changing, according to Chris Freund. To improve it, Vietnam should further focus on transparency of information for US investors, so investors can better understand Vietnamese economic information, the investment environment, and the effectiveness of investment projects in a timely manner.

The managing director said the US president’s visit sent a clear message to help US investors better identify opportunities in Vietnam.

The general director of Maritime Securities Inc (MSI) Mac Quang Huy said Obama’s visit would have a positive psychological impact on Vietnam’s stock market. The Vietnamese market had already recognised the positive signals, according to Huy. He also said the local stock market rallied after the previous US presidents’ visits in 2000 and 2006.

“The TPP, which is part of the visit’s agenda, will have a positive impact on textile stocks. In addition, some industries with potential co-operation agreements with the US, such as oil and gas, finance, and banking, will see their stock value rise in the market,” Huy said.

According to securities experts, Vietnam needs to improve transparency, expand the scale and quality of the market and listed companies, and promote the Initial public offering of large State-owned enterprises to make the local market more attractive to foreign investors, including US investors.

Vietnam should also diversify investment instruments, create more flexible administrative procedures for foreign investors, and give them more access to locally-listed firms. This will raise international investor confidence in the Vietnamese stock market.

The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in its quarterly update two months ago, took in 19 Singlish terms. Terms such as the exclamatory “wah” and “sabo”, a contraction of “sabotage”, are now part of “the definitive record of the English language”, as the OED describes itself on its website.

Although those Singlish terms were not the first to be included in the OED – “lah” and “sinseh” made it in 2000 and “kiasu” was included in 2007 – the recent development is seen as an acknowledgement that Singlish is a deeply ingrained part of local culture by some of those who have long championed it.

Poet and literary critic Gwee Li Sui, 45, says: “The list is quite choobi (cute). I don’t think any Singlish speaker would have made the same selection, but then the heart of the list is meant to be ang moh lah.”

He describes Singlish as a “patchwork patois” of the four official languages along with elements of Hokkien, Bengali and other tongues.

Humourist Sylvia Toh, 69, had celebrated the “richness and colour” of Singlish before it was fashionable to do so, in her books Eh Goondu! (1982) and Lagi Goondu! (1986).

She says: “Speaking as a Singaporean, you’ve got to be happy and take a sense of pride as it counts as acknowledgement that Singlish is important to, and part of, our national identity. Ironically, a former colonial master is recognising this, while our own government campaigns fought to rid it.”

The Speak Good English Movement was launched in 2000 to stem the tide of Singlish that had swept into every nook and cranny of the island.

But now, even politicians and officials are on the Singlish bandwagon after years of waging battle against it.

Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say is credited for coming up with “betterer” and ’betterest” back in 2010, while during the General Election last year, Senior Minister of State for Finance Sim Ann described opposition leader Chee Soon Juan as someone who likes to “chut pattern” (someone who is full of antics).

Gwee, a former academic in the English Language and Literature Department at the National University of Singapore, points out this official shift in a May 13 opinion piece for The New York Times, which was at one point among the Most Popular articles on the newspaper’s app.

He is not surprised by the interest generated by the piece.

“Many Singaporeans are passionate about Singlish, and every Singlish speaker thinks of himself or herself as an authority. Visitors here are often happy like bird to complete their visits by learning a word or two,” he says.

Indeed, on a recent promotional trip for the superhero flick Captain America: Civil War, American actor Anthony Mackie dropped a fairly decent-sounding “yes, lah” and “no, lah” during the press conference to demonstrate that he was down with the lingua franca.

But this does not mean that students can anyhow chut pattern in their English compositions and essays at school.

A primary school teacher, who declines to be named, says: “Some of the inclusions are words from another language, not English. In my opinion, such terms should not be accepted in examinations, especially when they are used colloquially.”

Account manager Tan May Yik, 36, a mother of two children aged eight and five, says: “Singlish is like a dialect, it’s just part of our lifestyle and culture. Therefore it shouldn’t be considered as proper English and be accepted in exams.”

Goh Eck Kheng, chairman of the Speak Good English Movement, does not think the wider acceptance of Singlish sounds the death knell for the campaign he heads.

For one thing, there are still many who confuse bad English for Singlish.

Goh, 61, says: “Not everyone who speaks Singlish can also speak English. There are those who think Singlish is English. Others habitually use ungrammatical, fractured English.”

An example: “Can you off the light” is bad English, while “Turn off the light, leh” is Singlish.

Some students think using Singlish would add colour to their assignments while others think it would erode the standard of English here.

Student Abdul Alim Iskandar Dzulkhari Kajai, 14, says: “It’s confirmed not allowed, but personally, I would want it to be allowed because it will make the composition more entertaining, and entertaining usually means more marks.”

On the other hand, student Desiree Orien Tay, 17, says: “Since the OED is pretty well known and since we follow what goes on in Cambridge, I feel that eventually they will accept it in our exams. However, I really hope they won’t. If they do, kids will not speak proper English.”

Satirist and film-maker Colin Goh, 46, has no qualms giving Singlish the thumbs-up for its humour and inventiveness.

“Its mish-mash of various languages and dialects, often involving bad transliterations, is very, very funny. Contrary to popular belief, Singlish is not merely badly spoken English, akin to pidgin. There is a conscious art in Singlish – a level of ingenious and humorous wordplay that is equalled only perhaps by Cockney rhyming slang.”

He and his wife, Woo Yen Yen, started the Coxford Singlish Dictionary online in 2000 and lovingly compiled the meanings of more than 1,000 words and phrases from “act blur” to “ya ya”. It has been in print since 2001.

But back then, he never imagined that the OED would “validate” Singlish. He adds: “We also don’t need its validation, though it’s quite nice, lah. Thank you, hor.”

Gwee, who parses the finer points of Singlish in a series titled SinGweesh for website The Middle Ground, expresses similar sentiments.

“It’s like saying French words in the OED validate French or an international report on Afrikaans validates it. Enough of the colonial mindset. The fact that Singlish continues to thrive against all odds is its own validation.”

At the closed-door Asean-Russia Commemorative Summit, the leaders of 10 South-east Asian countries and Russian President Vladimir Putin took stock of their relations and discussed strategies to work even closer on ensuring peace and prosperity for their regions.

Russia supports a stable, prosperous Asean, Putin stressed.

At an earlier reception for Asean leaders, he noted that trade and investment links were far below their potential, and pledged his country’s support to boost them.

“It is important that both Russia and the Aseancountries support stronger integration and links between the big economic projects under way in the Asia-Pacific region,” he said.

He also told business leaders he would discuss the idea of a free trade zone between Asean and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with other members Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.

Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, whose country is Asean chair this year, said: “Russia and many Asean countries have much deeper ties that go back to the more distant past. This is a very good framework for developing relations on a modern footing.”

Addressing the commemorative summit, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong set out the significant role Russia can play in the Asia-Pacific.

“To fully harness the potential of our region, we should strive for a region which is characterised by, firstly, peace and stability. Secondly, building on that, growth and prosperity,” he said.

But peace and stability requires management of specific issues.

“In the South China Sea, we see a significant and worrying escalation of tensions… This bodes ill for a region that is highly dependent on maritime trade and commerce and on freedom of navigation,” he said.

“On the Korean peninsula, the deliberate and provocative actions by (North Korea) can trigger its neighbours also to go nuclear and destabilise the whole region.”

There is also the challenge of terrorism, with groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria recruiting many citizens in Asean and elsewhere to fight in Syria, and radicalising them to violent acts.

Lee called on leaders to work together to tackle these issues. This means adhering to international law and peaceful resolution of disputes – including full respect for legal and diplomatic processes – and exercising self-restraint, and sharing intelligence and combating the spread of radical ideology.

“At the strategic level, it means we need to build an open and inclusive architecture, where regional players and major powers can constructively engage each other,” he said, pointing to Asean-centric mechanisms for cooperation.

These include the East Asia Summit, the Asean Regional Forum, and the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)-Plus for Asean and eight key partners – including the United States, China, India and Russia – to strengthen security and defence cooperation.

“That is why we welcome Russia as a dialogue partner, because Russia has a valuable role to play in upholding the region’s peace and stability,” said Lee. Moscow, he noted, has been a valuable participant in ADMM-Plus, co-chairing its experts’ working group on military medicine. It has also engaged Asean partners in non-traditional security matters like counter-terrorism and combating transnational crime.

With peace and stability, Asia-Pacific countries have a chance to establish a growing and prosperous region, Lee added.

“Right now, we are experiencing anaemic global economic growth, volatile market fluctuations and low commodity prices,” he said, adding that economic cooperation can be a “win-win approach to promote greater prosperity”.

Asean is also heartened by the interest from Russia and the EAEU to deepen economic links, he added, saying an EAEU-Singapore free trade agreement (FTA) being studied can be a “useful pathfinder” towards an Asean-EAEU pact.

Lee arrived in Sochi and met Russian President Putin on Thursday. They affirmed the deepening bilateral ties and growing economic partnership. Putin also expressed support for an EAEU-Singapore FTA, and both looked forward to further collaboration in new areas.

On Friday, Lee met Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for the first time since the former deputy prime minister became premier last month. Both affirmed the good relations between their countries and looked forward to developing closer links and expanding economic cooperation under their strategic partnership agreement.

Obama is the third consecutive US President to visit Vietnam, following Bill Clinton in 2000 and George W.Bush in 2006.

US President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam is set to further deepen the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership, Vietnamese Ambassador to the US Pham Quang Vinh said in a recent interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency.

Commenting on the significance of the visit, Vinh said it would be the third trip by a US President since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic ties 20 years ago.

Two-way trade has soared to US$45 billion, a 20-fold increase since 1995. During President Obama’s tenure, both countries signed a comprehensive partnership framework in 2013 and adopted the Vietnam-US Joint Vision Statement in 2015, when Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong paid a historic visit to the US.

Vietnam-US ties have progressed in all fields, ranging from politics, national defence and security, science and technology, education, people-to-people exchange as well as regional and global issues of shared concern.

Asked whether the visit’s significance would be diminished since Obama is to conclude his second term next year, Vinh said, throughout the history of the Vietnam – US relationship, the normalisation and expansion of the bilateral strategic partnership had garnered the support of the US Democratic and Republican Parties.

Personally, Obama pledged further focus on ties with Asia and Asean, as evidenced by the Asean-US Summit held in Sunnylands last February. Therefore, the visit was expected to push bilateral links forward from now on, not only during Obama’s term of office, but also in following tenures.

According to Vinh, a highlight of Obama’s visit would be the continuation of mutually-beneficial ties on the basis of mutual respect, including respect of each other’s sovereignty, independence and political regime.

On the back of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal soon to be enacted, he said two-way trade is to accelerate, adding that the visit would create a driving force for science-technology and education cooperation.

People-to-people exchange or joint work on global issues such as climate change, maritime security and environment would be also among the major themes of the visit, he said.

Regarding the possibility of the US lifting the ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam, Vinh said it should be done as early as possible, hopefully during the visit, in order to remove the last barrier in bilateral ties and strengthen mutual trust.

Once the TPP comes into force, he believes that two-way trade will surge in both quantity and quality, with growth expected to be around 20 per cent per year, and pointed to science, education and people-to-people exchange as promising areas of collaboration.

Switching to the East Sea issue, he called for the maintenance of peace, stability, maritime security and safety in line with international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which is a common concern for the region, including for Asean.

As regards to the human rights issue, he said Vietnam and the US had shared experience to better ensure the human rights of their peoples.

Via increased dialogue, and on the basis of mutual respect, the two countries would strive to benefit their people and countries, he said.

Air Transport Action Group ( ATAG ) executive director Michael Gill said that with four key areas set up by the International Civil Aviation Organization ( ICAO ), the world’s aviation industry could continue to grow while simultaneously taking a cost-effective approach to deal with its environmental impacts.

The four key areas are technology and sustainable alternative fuels, operations, infrastructure and market-based measures.

“We want that Indonesia’s aviation industry can continuously grow to provide social and economic benefits to its society. But, we’d also like to balance the ability of the aviation industry to grow with a responsible approach to climate impacts. And that’s why we’ve set the four key areas to help us achieving our climate targets,” Gill told thejakartapost.com on the sidelines of the 2016 International Transport Forum ( ITF ) Summit in Leipzig, Germany, on Thursday morning, local time.

During the 2015 meeting, leaders from the aviation industry and the global business community set up three carbon reduction goals: first, to improve the fuel efficiency of the world fleet by an average 1.5 percent per year, a goal the industry claims it has exceeded; second, to stabilize net aviation CO2 emissions at 2020 levels through carbon-neutral growth; and third, to halve aviation’s net CO2 emissions by 2050, compared with a 2005 baseline.

“We will achieve them with four pillars of strategies, which are focused on new aircraft technology and the development of sustainable alternative fuels, better use of operational measures, more efficient aviation infrastructure, and the development of economic measures, market-based measures for aviation in form of a mandatory global off-setting scheme,” Gill said.

It is expected that the global market-based measures for aviation, which will be developed through the ICAO, will be in place from 2020 onwards. The industry considers a single global carbon offsetting scheme to be the swiftest and most effective approach.

Gill said one significant area in Indonesia was the country’s commitment to develop sustainable alternative fuels. “I’m sure that the Indonesian government is currently examining the implementation of its sustainable alternative fuel mandates, [under which] fuels must come from sustainable sources. We believe it is an area Indonesia [in which] can become a leader,” he said.

Gill further explained that new aircraft and new types of engines were expected as the aviation industry invested billions of dollars every year in new technology. Citing ICAO data, he said civil aerospace spent US$15 billion per year on efficiency-related research and development ( R&D ).

“This is what we currently spend. What we need to support us to meet the 2020 target is in the area of economic regulation, on the market-based measures. When you combine that with the current level of investment in new technology, initiative in infrastructure and operational spaces, we will meet the 2020 goal,” said Gill.

“The important thing […] is to see more significant investment in new technology, and the use of sustainable alternative fuel sources to achieve the 2050 goal. So, our message to the governments is to continue to invest in new technology, R&D. We don’t want to mention the figure, but we want to just call on the governments to support the aviation industry,” he went on.

Earlier, International Air Transport Association ( IATA ) director general and CEO Tony Tyler said the mandatory offsetting scheme would reduce CO2 production in the aviation industry. He rejected the idea of carbon taxes,which many people have praised as a measure to mitigate the environmental impacts of aviation.

“Arguments, which say that by making fuel a lot more expensive then people will stop using it, will lead the aviation industry to shrink,” Tyler told journalists after the 2016 ITF Summit opening plenary on Wednesday.

“Nobody wants aviation to shrink. Aviation is a powerful engine of economic development, particularly for developing countries. If they want to be successful in the economy, they need aviation. […] So just simply making fuel a lot more expensive will not reduce the fuel being burned,” he went on.

Tyler praised the government’s progress in improving the country’s aviation industry. “The prospects of the aviation industry in Indonesia are very positive. It’s a country with a huge population. It has islands. Aircraft are a lot faster and a lot more efficient. It’s very safe as well,” he said.

“The [Indonesian] government has made good investments in infrastructure, building airports. It’s a very good investment. We see new carriers with new aircraft. Garuda transformed itself recently. It provides a good service and it’s a good airline.”

In 2013, during the last ICAO General Assembly, which takes place every three years, governments decided to develop market-based measures for aviation that could be implemented from 2020. “We have been focusing our works both on a technical level and implementing processes and standards that we need so the system can work on a global scale,” said Gill. At the political level, the process is ongoing to redefine the parameters of the agreement and obligations that need to be followed.

“The process has been running in a good fashion; we are encouraged by the way the discussion has come forward,” said Gill.

“The latest development was last week, in which there was a high level meeting in Montreal, our meeting to negotiate and discuss the future of market-based measures. What we want to happen is the achieving of an agreement in the next ICAO Assembly in September 2016,” he said.