When Indonesian president Joko Widodo was elected in 2014, he vowed to boost economic growth to 7% of gross domestic product (GDP). Subsequently, plans to spend around US$355 billion building a total of 265 projects by 2019 were announced, in a bid to bridge the US$1.5 trillion infrastructure gap Indonesia still had in comparison to other emerging economies, according to the World Bank in 2017.

Singapore announced a carbon tax in its 2018 Budget, last Monday, being the first country in Southeast Asia to do so.

After much speculation, the Singaporean government finally revealed this year’s budget for the country. In his speech, Singapore Finance Minister, Heng Swee Keat talked about three major shifts facing Singapore in the coming decade – a greater emphasis on Asia, the emerging of new technologies and an aging population. The budget that Heng Swee Keat presented featured some surprises as well as some already expected measures.

Donald Trump’s inherently protectionist “America First” policy is a far cry from what many have grown to perceive the United States in the international arena – as a bastion of free trade. But with Trump at the helm, the superpower has rescinded its global leadership in trade and has dented its reputation further by way of imposing tariffs. The recent tariffs which affected industries in Asia – specifically Southeast Asia – was the imposition of tariffs on solar panels and modules.

Overseas remittances contributed US$31.29 billion to the Philippine economy last year, according to data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in February 2018. Even with the recent foreign policy ban on workers to Kuwait, this seems unlikely to hamper the volume of remittances back home. Remittances are defined by the financial education website Investopedia as the funds sent by an expatriate to his/her country of origin via wire, mail or online transfer.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EV) by Southeast Asian policymakers has rapidly accelerated over the past few months. There is now a race between the bigger players in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to become a regional hub to deploy and manufacture electric vehicles.Currently, there are four types of EVs globally.

The current push towards electronic payments in Southeast Asia also increases the need for government regulation and consolidated systems to facilitate the smoothness and security of transactions.The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) recent introduction of the Payments Council in February 2018 is one such example. The Payments Council is being set up with the aim of developing strategies that would drive increased adoption of e-payments.

Southeast Asia has been touted as one of the world’s fastest growing regions. Bloomberg reported last year that Southeast Asia has a population of 620 million people and an economy worth US$2.6 trillion. This regional economy is expected to keep growing and the World Economic Forum predicted in 2017 that it will have the world’s fifth largest economy by 2020.

Having taken the world by storm, green bonds have now reached the shores of Southeast Asia.The basics of a green bond remain the same as any other regular bond. A bond is in effect, a promise between its issuer and the investor. The investor in purchasing the bond, lends that sum of money to the issuer. The investor should be paid back the full amount at the end of the bond maturity date, with interest payments being made at particular intervals during the tenure of the bond.

We outlined in Part 1 how e-commerce taxes are likely to affect the Southeast nations of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Since e-commerce is transnational by nature, a few technical issues also surface when redefining conventional taxation laws to suit a more international context. It is, however, possible to look at what different jurisdictions have done so far.