President Xi Jinping warned of “severe” challenges while laying out a road map to turn China into a leading global power by 2050, as he kicked off a twice-a-decade party gathering expected to cement his influence into the next decade.In a speech that ran for more than three hours on Wednesday, Xi declared victory over “many difficult, long overdue problems” since he took power in 2012.

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 will turn to private investors for the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment needed to develop the archipelago’s infrastructure and natural resources, President Joko Widodo said, brushing off claims he was increasingly becoming an economic nationalist.All major projects will be offered to the private sector, Widodo, also known as Jokowi, told Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin on Saturday in an interview on a hilltop overlooking the picturesque Lake Toba.

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.

Almost four million new jobs, rising wages and eight interest-rate cuts in Indonesia should have been enough to spur consumers into action in the world’s fourth most populous nation.Instead, an increasing number of people are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings and putting their money in the bank, leaving policy makers and economists perplexed.

The RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) rose to prominence soon after US President Donald Trump rescinded his commitment to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade deal earlier this year.The TPP aimed to establish a regional FTA (Free Trade Agreement) and focussed on liberalising trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property rights, environmental protection, labour, financial services, technical barriers to trade and other regulatory issues.

Thailand’s military government is looking to start construction of projects under a 1.5 trillion baht (45 billion dollars) investment plan before the country’s possible return to democracy late next year.Enabling laws for the so-called Eastern Economic Corridor initiative should be in place by the end of 2017 to bolster investor confidence, and construction of some of the planned infrastructure could begin next year, Kanit Sangsubhan, the secretary-general of the office overseeing the plan, s