Central bank technology projects usually end with a report. In July 2026, Project Agorá ended with settled transactions — real value, real currencies, real institutions — and that distinction is the reason the exercise deserves attention. What happened Twenty-eight financial institutions and central banks across Asia, Europe and North America completed real-value transactions totalling approximately…

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection regime has spent three years as a statute without operational deadlines. That ends on 13 November 2026, when the Consent Manager framework under Rule 4 becomes live — the first hard, date-bound obligation the regime imposes on anyone. What a consent manager actually is The DPDP Act was passed in…

India is close to concluding the largest trade agreement in its history and simultaneously stuck on a much smaller one. The contrast says something useful about where New Delhi’s leverage now lies. Three deals, three states of play Partner Status Notes United Kingdom In force Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement live; more than US$140 million…

Japan’s central bank did nothing on 31 July, and that was the whole story. The Bank of Japan left its policy rate at 1% — the highest since 1995 — while the yen sat at a four-decade low against the dollar and the finance ministry appeared to be buying the currency to slow its slide.…

ASEAN Sets Its Sights on Antitrust: The 2026–2030 Competition Roadmap Amid the headline trade and geopolitical announcements from the 48th ASEAN Summit, a quieter initiative emerged that could matter more over time: a new Roadmap on Competition and Consumer Protection covering 2026 to 2030, aimed at building real cross-border coordination among the bloc’s ten national…

Indonesia’s Disinformation Bill Tests the Line Between Sovereignty and Speech Indonesia is advancing legislation aimed at countering what officials call foreign-driven disinformation, joining a growing list of Southeast Asian jurisdictions tightening legal control over online content, with implications that go well past domestic politics. The bill, which has moved through the legislative process in 2026,…

Japan Draws the Line on Taiwan — and Pulls the Philippines Closer A diplomatic rupture between Japan and China that started with an off-the-cuff remark last November has, by mid-2026, settled into a steady pattern of maritime pressure and defence realignment across Northeast and Southeast Asia. The friction goes back to comments by Japanese Prime…

Washington Cuts India’s Tariff to 10% — Reshuffling Asia’s Export Pecking Order A fast-moving sequence of US trade rulings has left India’s tariff position with Washington genuinely unsettled, with real consequences for how global buyers split sourcing across Asia’s competing manufacturing hubs. Under a US-India interim trade agreement announced in February 2026, India’s reciprocal tariff…

ASEAN’s Canada Pivot: Inside the Push to Conclude ACAFTA ASEAN is edging closer to a trade deal that would give the bloc its first comprehensive free trade agreement with a G7 economy outside its existing Asia-Pacific network. At the 48th ASEAN Summit, held in Cebu, the Philippines, in May 2026 under the chairmanship theme “Navigating…

Singapore’s Retrenchment Benefit Gap Exposed: Denso Ruling Strikes Out 19-Year Worker’s Claim A Singapore High Court ruling handed down in May 2026 has laid bare a gap between the tripartite labour norms Singapore promotes as central to its employment model and the narrower set of rights that are actually enforceable in the civil courts. That…