In June 2025, on a state visit to Tanzania, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced that Singapore would open negotiations on a free trade agreement with the eight-nation East African Community. On paper the match looks lopsided. A city-state of about six million people is sitting down with a bloc whose combined GDP, north of US$350 billion,…

Every cross-border transaction rests on a deceptively hard question: is the business on the other side who it claims to be? Today the answer comes from fragmented national registries, repeated know-your-business (KYB) checks, and a great deal of manual paperwork. Three initiatives now converging — ASEAN’s UBIN, the UN’s GRID, and the global Legal Entity…

The Asian Development Bank and UN ESCAP launched the Asia-Pacific Trade Facilitation Report 2026: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence in Trade Facilitation in Bangkok on 9 June 2026. Its message is more cautious than the title implies. AI is already changing how goods clear the region’s borders, but adoption is early, very uneven, and held back far…

Singapore Declares a Year of Climate Adaptation — What That Means in Practice Singapore sits barely above sea level on a tropical island, which gives its government a different relationship with climate change than most. This is not a policy debate — it is an engineering problem the city has been managing for decades. In…

Singapore Sets the Rules for GenAI and Personal Data — And Asks for Your View Two days ago, Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission published proposed guidelines that any business building or deploying generative AI in Singapore should read carefully. The Proposed Advisory Guidelines on the Use of Personal Data in Generative AI, released on 2…

Singapore Bets Big on AI: Kampong AI and the Push to Be the Region’s Hub Singapore is making its biggest bet on artificial intelligence yet, and Budget 2026 spells out what that looks like in practice. The centrepiece is Kampong AI, a dedicated AI park at One-North, Singapore’s existing innovation district. The name — a…

Singapore Tightens the Rules on Crypto — Again Singapore has long positioned itself as a serious jurisdiction for digital assets — welcoming to institutions, unwilling to become a haven for regulatory shortcuts. In 2026 that stance is being tested by fast-moving markets, and MAS is responding with another round of tightening. In May 2026, MAS…

China’s Overhauled Cybersecurity Law: A New Compliance Burden for Foreign Firms On 1 January 2026, the compliance picture for companies operating in China changed substantially. Amendments to China’s Cybersecurity Law — the foundational statute governing digital infrastructure and data security — entered into force, bringing obligations that are more demanding and more specific than what…

The China+N Strategy: Southeast Asia Wins the Supply Chain Sweepstakes “China plus one” has described a cautious corporate strategy for several years: keep China as the core manufacturing base, add one alternative location as a hedge. In 2026, that framing is starting to date. The reality now is China plus many — and Southeast Asia…

Japan and South Korea Draw Closer: A New Economic Alliance Takes Shape Japan and South Korea have spent much of the past decade making their relationship harder than the industrial logic suggests it should be. Historical grievances, territorial disputes, and periodic trade fights have repeatedly damaged what is, on paper, a natural partnership between two…