Data Driven Decisions

Chapter 37The ASEAN Region

Now let us examine Southeast Asia. Broadly defined as the nations that include Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia. In some cases, it includes Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, and so on, but the area of Southeast Asia that I want to focus on for this book is the ASEAN – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The ASEAN region, much like the GCC, comprises six different economies. Those economies include Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Brunei. Within the ASEAN region, there are ten member states. Within these ASEAN nations, I want to focus on Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. The reason I want to focus on these countries is that there are a lot of similarities to the Middle East. We will get into those presently, but the Middle East has a transitionary nature that has a lot of value, based on its proximity to other large markets, and Southeast Asia is the same. It has transitionary value because it is close to India and China. Politically, it is largely very neutral, but there are some strengths in the Southeast Asian economy that the Middle East could learn from.

The GDP of Indonesia is almost a trillion dollars, similar to the size of Saudi Arabia, but it is not as concentrated in energy and oil. Before we get into the specifics of the nations in the Southeast Asian subset that we want to talk about, it is important to look at Southeast Asia on a map (Figure 37.1