South-east Asia’s promise and perils

Amid the gathering doom and gloom around rising global interest rates, the Russia-Ukraine war, the US-China rifts and China’s economic slowdown, the prospects for South-east Asia’s economies over the next decade look relatively bright. Or at least that’s the broad conclusion of two reports that came out last week: one on the region’s economies and the other on its digital sectors.

But there are headwinds as well, especially in the short term, that are likely to dampen the prospects for the region. There are also possible “wild-card” events –

tensions in the Taiwan Strait,

for instance, unforeseen climate disasters or another financial crisis that could pose more serious risks.