As China’s burgeoning class of affluent travellers seek out more exotic destinations, Indonesia is cashing in.China is on track to become the biggest tourist market for Indonesia for the first time this year, overtaking Singapore. That’s after a 46 percent surge in visitors from the world’s second-largest economy to 1.4 million in the first eight months of the year.

Countries that are most in need of more food to feed their impoverished populations tend to be the ones where farmers have the hardest time expanding production.In low-income nations, agricultural productivity rose at a rate of 1.24 percent annually as of 2017, according to an annual study from the Global Harvest Initiative, a research organisation sponsored by Deere & Co., Monsanto, Smithfield Foods and other businesses and nonprofits.

Following the US's departure from the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade deal earlier this year, many ASEAN countries are now turning their focus to the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership).

Indonesia’s success in taming consumer prices provides room for lower interest rates, President Joko Widodo said, while making it clear that it was the job of the central bank to determine whether to cut.Inflation will average less than four percent this year, down from more than eight percent in 2014 when he took office, Widodo – also known as Jokowi – said in an interview at Huta Ginjang, overlooking the picturesque Lake Toba, where he had been to open a newly upgraded airport nearby.

Indonesia is on track to become a trillion-dollar economy and should be the envy of Southeast Asia. Yet on some key measures, the region’s biggest economy is falling behind.The nation lags its neighbours on infrastructure development, faces a fiscal shortfall that’s heaping pressure on the state budget and still has 28 million people living in poverty.

Philippine central bank Governor Nestor Espenilla said contained inflation means there isn’t a need to increase interest rates in the near term."Right now, there is no need to move policy rates looking at the inflation outlook," Espenilla said in Washington where he was attending the annual International Monetary Fund meetings.

Thailand’s already “very accommodative” monetary policy is fuelling robust growth that’s spreading across the economy, said Bank of Thailand Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob.The outlook comes as an exports revival in Thailand gains momentum despite a recent rise in the nation’s currency, the baht. Better demand from key trading partners is helping to offset strength in the exchange rate, Veerathai said.

Singapore’s economy gained traction in the third quarter as a pickup in exports helped to drive up manufacturing.Highlights of GDP Report Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted and annualised rate of 6.3 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, according to preliminary figures from the trade ministry on Friday.

Singapore’s central bank is widely seen sticking to a neutral stance on Friday, but it may be moving closer to tightening policy as the economy continues to strengthen.All but one of the 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which uses the exchange rate rather than interest rates as its main tool, will keep its policy stance where it is: seeking no appreciation in the currency against a trading basket.Less clear is whether the MAS will signal it’s re

Mau Dizon, a marketing officer in one of the largest Philippine banks, is among millions of Filipino taxpayers who stand to benefit from President Rodrigo Duterte’s tax reform plan that aims to return to consumers 860 billion pesos (17 billion dollars) over five years.Dizon will pay lower taxes under the proposed reform and is likely to spend most of the savings on staples, which account for about a third of her family’s monthly budget.