Social institutions such as education, healthcare and public housing services play a key part in a country’s soft infrastructure. Apart from roads, bridges, airports and other hard infrastructure projects needed to sustain growth across the region, soft infrastructure initiatives are just as crucial in developing knowledge, innovation and technical know-how.As a whole, the region has prospered over the past two decades with the “manufacturing for export” strategy as the main pillar i

Myanmar’s launch of its first commercial solar plant last month is a step in the right direction for a country that has yet to provide more than half of its citizens with proper access to electricity.Constructed on over 836 acres of land, an area equivalent to almost 530 football fields, the Minbu Solar Power Plant will be ASEAN’s largest solar power plant according to Thailand’s META Corporation – the project’s contractor and developer.

The ASEAN Post recently published an article entitled “Empty bellies in Lao” which highlighted the serious and persisting issue of malnutrition among Laotian children. One of the main reasons malnutrition has become an issue in Lao for a long time now is that the country is poor.

The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) recent US$60 million loan to Cambodia is set to boost the skills and competitiveness of its growing labour force as the country’s economy undergoes a key transition.Driven by garment exports and tourism, Cambodia’s economy grew by an average of 7.7 percent between 1995 and 2018 according to the World Bank, making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

ASEAN is set to become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030, and it is a transition that will be championed by an increasingly tech-savvy younger population which is rapidly rising up the socio-economic ladder.

Pressures from population growth and an economic boom have increased demand for water in Vietnam, risking depletion of the valuable resource and threatening the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by up to six percent by 2035 – a year’s worth of GDP growth.About 8.5 million urban citizens in Vietnam lack access to clean water, and in rural areas, about 41 million dwellers do not have clean water supply.

Several challenges lie ahead for Malaysia if the former global tin leader is to revive the industry. Speaking to local media last week, Malaysia’s Minister of Water, Land and Natural Resources, Dr Xavier Jayakumar, said the country is looking to restart the industry as prices have now rebounded to US$20,000 per metric tonne. However, it is not as simple as that. Firstly, prices above US$20,000 are nothing new.

In debt, in a foreign country, and probably feeling like they are just in over their heads – many migrant workers in ASEAN will have more important things to think about today while the rest of the world celebrates International Labour Day.Often low-skilled and undocumented, and nearly always overworked and underpaid, ASEAN’s migrant workers are nevertheless the unsung heroes of the region.While they play crucial roles in society in everything from building the infrastructure that Southeast A

ASEAN has to do more to attract private investment for key sustainable infrastructure programmes as the region makes the transition to a low carbon economy. HSBC presented a report to ASEAN Finance Ministers in Bangkok earlier this month ahead of their annual ministerial summit which outlined three recommendations in response to the region being disproportionately affected by climate change and the growing need for private investment to help bridge infrastructure funding gaps.The rep

While malnutrition is a global plague, it is a more acute problem in Asia. According to a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Bank Group published last year, more than half of all stunted children, almost half of all overweight children and more than two-thirds of all wasted children live in the region.Zooming into Southeast Asia, the results are, unfortunately, not too surprising. The report titled ‘Level