As the world continues to globalise at a rapid pace, the demand for better and more efficient technology will skyrocket. One of the players feeding that growing demand has been India.According to government statistics, the information technology (IT) sector accounts for 45 percent of India’s services exports and 9.3 percent of its nearly US$2.3 trillion gross domestic product (GDP).

In March, multiple media outlets broke the news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices. Among some of the things that were reported was that the company had acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes.

A recent report revealed that the government of Thailand has passed a bill that it hopes will ensure more effective tax collection, especially from e-commerce businesses.

Singapore has a problem and it's two-fold. On the one hand, it is an ageing country. Singapore falls under the ageing high income market bracket which has limited demographic wiggle room to maximise growth potential. Singapore is projected to reach a high old age dependency ratio of over 25 percent by 2025.

Last week, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen claimed that the number of tourists visiting Cambodia had increased substantially over the years and now the country is expecting 12 million tourists by 2025. He was rationalising the building of new airports in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap to 18,000 workers in the Kandal province."France’s Vinci, the company overseeing airports in Cambodia, never expected the high growth of tourists travelling by air to Cambodia.

This year has been transformational for the ride hailing sector in Southeast Asia according to a recent joint report by Google and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings. With the merger of Grab and Uber in March, and the latter’s withdrawal of services from the region, Grab has consolidated its leadership in the sector.

Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) is slated to be an arterial node for trade, investment, and regional transportation, besides also serving as a strategic gateway to the Southeast Asian region.

Cambodian Senate president Say Chhum recently encouraged the country’s youth to study hard in order to become future leaders. He made the comment during the opening ceremony of the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia congress at a hotel in Phnom Penh.Chhum’s call certainly makes sense if one were to consider how young the Cambodian population is.

Faced with dwindling tourist numbers from the West, Myanmar is pulling out all stops to woo visitors closer to home. It has relaxed visa rules to visitors from China, South Korea and Japan and aims to bring about half a million of them over to Mandalay this year.Beginning 1 October this year, the country has waived visa requirements for visitors from Japan and South Korea for one year, as a trial run. Visitor growth from these two countries had been stagnating for a while.

Doing business in the Philippines could become a lot easier in the near future. After the country’s dismal performance in the World Bank’s “Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs” index, the country is determined to turn things around and improve business conditions there. Released at the end of last year, the report from the World Bank revealed that the Philippines has dropped 14 places – from 99th to 113th – in the ease of doing business list.