Economy and industry

[] Asean faces some key challenges that will test the resilience of governments: business and tech life cycles are moving at a faster pace; the rise of the disruptive platforms and their impact on services; use of data analytics to engage citizens; the rise of ...

Myanmar is three years into a telecoms boom that has changed the physical and technological landscape of the country with unparalleled speed. Since the sector was opened to foreign competition in 2014, thousands of mobile towers have sprung up around the country and more than ...

Laos and France have agreed to enhance cooperation in the energy sector and improve the management of water resources on the Mekong River by building a new Coordination and Monitoring Centre (CMC). The centre will be equipped to monitor hydroelectric power project (HPP) development on ...

One of the world’s greatest rivers is under threat from unregulated activities in riparian countries, including dam construction, which disrupt the river’s flow and break down its food chains, experts cautioned. Keep reading ...

As growing trade and investment linkages in Asia and the Pacific have helped to improve the region’s overall resilience to global economic and trade policy uncertainties, countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) need to make swifter progress in streamlining trade through multilateral agreements that ...

Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical aims to generate sales of baht (Bt) 2bn-3bn ($60m-90m) from neighboring countries, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV), as it makes investments to boost the region’s plastics industry, the company’s president and CEO Supattanapong Punmeechaow told ICIS. Keep reading   ...

An environmental group in Chiang Rai has renewed its campaign against the controversial Pak Beng dam that is due to be built on the transnational Mekong River by lodging a complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court against Thai authorities for failing to provide local communities ...

[] To enhance its economic and political clout, China has made substantial inroads across Southeast Asia on the back of multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and investment deals like the one in Cambodia. This is how China will engage with the world for the foreseeable future. At the ...

From crowdfunding platforms to drones, chatbots, and artificial intelligence, emerging startups in ASEAN are leveraging on their existing technologies and business models to solve the region’s most urgent problems through a competition called “Startups to the Resque.”[] According to the 2016 World Risk Index by the United ...

Flooding has spread in this northeastern province, with a village of about 150 houses and 5,000 rai of ricefields now under water. The floods came after Ubonrat Dam on Sunday began to discharge water at the rate of 46 million cubic meters per day. Keep ...